Description
Joe Pytka's Bastide may be the ultimate mogul's toy, an intimate, luxurious restaurant designed by Andre Putnam, uncrowded and serene, with a kitchen the size of a hockey rink, a distinguished cellar and a roster of ex-chefs distinguished enough to constitute a restaurant scene onto itself - Pytka runs Bastide the way other men subsidize opera seasons.
If you have come to Bastide to experience the full afterburner thrust of advanced French cuisine you might have seen under its former chefs, you may be a bit disappointed. Joseph Mahon is a fine technical chef, but at the moment his cooking, rooted in French classics and farmers market produce, is simple and direct - a menu that wouldn't have seemed out of place at Citrus 20 years ago, whose kitchen coincidentally run at the time by Alain Giraud, Bastide's first chef. Pytka is known for his whim of iron, and by the time you make it to the restaurant it may have been transformed to a replica of a Strasbourg bistro, a Burgundy farmhouse or a three-star restaurant in Annecy, but Mahon's vision of Bastide 4.0 is worth a look.
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