Blue Ribbon New York Restaurant Blue Ribbon New York Restaurant Downing Streek
Blue Ribbon Bakery, on Downing Street (Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)
In my telephone conversations with the Bromberg brothers over recent days, as I fact-checked this week's review on the newest Blue Ribbon restaurant, I was reminded of the background of the Blue Ribbon brood, a background that's pretty interesting. There wasn't enough space in the review to share much of it.
At this point, with the Blue Ribbon restaurants so well established, few food lovers probably remember that the initial Blue Ribbon initially wasn't a Blue Ribbon at all. What Eric Bromberg, in partnership with others, opened on Sullivan Street between Prince and Spring streets in 1992 was a much more formal French restaurant called the Crystal Room.
It reflected his classical training at the Cordon Bleu in Paris and attempted to make proper use of that. It had crystal chandeliers, he recalled. It had golden arches. It had walls in a "tough shade of green," he said.
"It kind of looked like somebody's grandmother's house in 1972," he said, adding that he didn't like it one bit.
It lasted all of 10 weeks, after which point Mr. Bromberg got to work on changing it into something that didn't feel so stuffy to his friends — or, for that matter, to him. Bricks beneath the sheet rock were exposed. The chandeliers were nixed. Red and yellow paint was splashed around.
And, before the end of 1992, the first Blue Ribbon was born. It served — and still serves — some dishes proper enough to have qualified for the Crystal Room menu. But it added pu-pu platters and matzo ball soup to the offerings.
Now there are eight Blue Ribbons of various kinds, a phrase I use, and a qualification I make, to signal that Blue Ribbon Bakery Market on Bedford Street is more market than restaurant, and also to signal that Blue Ribbon Downing St. Bar (34 Downing near Bedford; 212-691-0404) is all counters and stools: a wine bar with a whole lot of food; an Americanized version of a tapas bar.
In fact it deserves more note than it's received: some of the food is hugely fun and appealing; the tiny room is pretty; and the service is as friendly as it gets.
There are so many Blue Ribbons now that I've not been able to visit all of them, and I'd be curious to hear thoughts from readers who have sampled the whole bunch, or at least sampled many members of the brood. Which are preferable in which circumstances? Which seem the most reliable and which haven't been as satisfying as the others?
Please keep all remarks tempered and tactful, as the more remarks Diner's Journal can post, the more help we can provide to people trying to figure out which Blue Ribbon, if any, to visit.
Here's another interesting fact about the Blue Ribbon brood: the Bromberg brothers — Eric, 45, and Bruce, 41 — have apparently never hired a cook who immediately and directly took charge of a Blue Ribbon kitchen. They insist that anyone hopping aboard the Blue Ribbon train start out doing dish-washing or prep work. Even a person slated for big cooking responsibilities has to work his or her way up, at least for a short term.
The Brombergs said that it promotes a culture of respect among workers while ensuring that anyone running one of the restaurant's kitchens has become fully aware of the Blue Ribbon way of doing and making things.
"Our Number One objective is consistency," Eric Bromberg said. "We've chosen the level that we can be consistent at, and our objective is to perform perfectly within those confines every day."
Source: https://archive.nytimes.com/dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/the-background-on-blue-ribbon/
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