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Le Cafe Louis Vuitton dazzles like a giant snowflake over the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. The improbably excellent, sleek and stylish restaurant on the fourth floor of the Louis Vuitton store is the best eating place ever to co-exist with $10,700 Cappucine BB handbags and $1,460 LV “trainer” sneakers.
It’s more luxurious than Daniel Boulud’s Blue Box at Tiffany next door and has a vastly more sophisticated menu than Saks’ L’Avenue. Opened two weeks ago, it’s already a “must” not only for fashionable ladies-who-lunch, but for gourmands from uptown, downtown and farther afield.
It was no secret that the elegant Vuitton store (you won’t believe the space was once Nike) planned to have a serious restaurant. But nobody expected anything like this French-themed collaboration between mega-restaurateur Stephen Starr, executive chef Christophe Bellanca and Louis Vuitton parent LVMH.
Starr’s downtown gem Le Coucou and Bellanca’s Essential by Christophe on the Upper West Side each boast a Michelin star. Further sweetening the Michelin mix is the fact that executive pastry chef Mary George was previously at two-star Restaurant Daniel.
Bellanca came aboard after he was approached early this year by his friend Arnaud Donckele, the chef at Louis Vuitton’s celebrated restaurant in St. Tropez. Donckele put him in touch with Starr, who checked out Essential “to see what I’m doing,” Bellanca said. The two immediately hit it off.
But how can Bellanca be in both places at once? He isn’t.
“I would never compromise Essential,” he told The Post.
Cafe Louis Vuitton does most of its business in the morning and afternoon, so he’s there early. Later, he heads to Essential, which is only open for dinner.
The Cafe has a long waiting list for midday reservations (and often long, snaking lines) — for good reason.
It’s a transporting place to spend a December afternoon. The library-styled dining room with hundreds of shelved books is graced with comfortable chairs you don’t want to get up from. Cozy fabric banquettes are lined with more plush pillows than those at Park Avenue’s Scully & Scully. Dark and light wood and orange accents throughout the space shimmer in the natural light that streams in through a long, mullioned window.
Bellanca’s French-tinted menu (starters $24 to $48; mains $39 to $62) is accessible to everyone, from a morning waffle with smoked salmon and cream cheese to very traditional, and pleasingly sweet Dover sole Meuniere. “I’m an old-school guy. The only way I know how to cook it is on the bone,” Bellanca said of it.
The best-seller, “monogram flower” ravioli, is a pretty-as-a-picture quartet of spinach ravioli filled with fontina, gruyere, talleggio and chopped spinach; topped with black truffles and bathed in truffle emulsion. It’s decadent but not hefty, remarkably light on the tongue despite its rich elements.
Burger lovers fed up with today’s common “smash” variety will rejoice at the Cafe’s offering ($32). The medium-thick patty is made from Pat LaFrieda’s dry-aged sirloin and hanger steak. It has a great depth of flavor, enhanced by Vermont cheddar, crisp lettuce, sliced onions, tomato and pickles on a warm potato bun.
Of George’s desserts ($18 to $24), the one not to miss is the vanilla entremet, a cubed, textured wonder of Madagascar vanilla, caramelized milk jam and caramelized almonds. Not too sweet, it’s a great way to end a meal — and seduce you into buying fancier sneakers than Nike ever knew.
