Crucial DBGB details from the mouth of Boulud

Posted in Eat Out by Jordana Rothman on May 1st, 2009 at 5:12 pm

Daniel Boulud and Jim Leiken shopping on the Bowery (Photo: Bobby Lapointe)

Oh, hey. We know it’s a Friday afternoon and you’re beat and the weather has rendered that top ten list of open-air bars entirely useless. But maybe you can still summon the energy for an epic, revealing missive from Daniel Boulud about the menu at his forthcoming DBGB? We thought so.

Find the whole glorious document, plus more photos of Boulud and executive chef Jim Leiken, after the jump.

Boulud and Leiken on the Bowery (Photo: Bobby Lapointe)

“My downtown menu crosses from bistro into brasserie territory. On the bistro side there’s the seasonal cooking chef Jim Leiken will be doing; on the brasserie side, selections of charcuterie, shellfish platters and a ‘Tête au Pied’ section for hard-core types like me who crave fromage de tête, veal tongue, tripe, pig’s trotters and ris de veau.

“Early on there was a lot of murmuring about this being a burger place, which it isn’t. I guess I earned the rumor with all the attention the burger at DB Bistro has gotten over the years. On the Bowery we’ll be a little French and a little American. (Okay, I admit there are actually three burgers on the menu, but that’s for another conversation.) When it comes to the soul of the menu—our homemade sausages—we’re really Pan-European.

“No matter what country I’m in I always go for the local sausage. The affair goes back to my childhood and the sausages my father made on our farm outside Lyon. Things only got worse during the year I spent as a chef in Denmark. The Danes are the kings of the street hot-dog vendors. It was a once-a-day habit for me. Actually, my fellow cooks and I used to compete to see how many we could eat at once.

Now, with the help of my charcutier friend Gilles Verot, we’ve come up with a world tour of sausage making for DBGB. It translates into 14 varieties, each with its own particular cultural roots, and all made in-house. There’s the ‘Beaujolaise’ inspired by the tradition of making sausages with meats marinated in red wine and then cooking the sausage in boiling hot ‘must’—what’s left in the still after making eau-de-vie. It’s heady stuff and served over a bed of lentils. The’Merguez’ is France’s answer to the hot dog. Ours is served with North African flavors, over chickpeas with lemon and braised spinach. The ‘Toulouse’ gets its flavors from southwestern France. It’s made with pork and braised duck and is served cassoulet style. I even have an English style banger I call the ‘Anglaise,’ served with bubble and squeak and Cumberland sauce. I tasted my first back in my Le Cirque days when Norman Parkinson brought me some from Harrods to serve for a lady’s lunch he was hosting. It was not a typicquement Park Avenue menu, and they loved it.

“The list goes on and includes a ‘Boudin Basque,’ a spicy blood sausage over mashed potatoes; a ‘Parisien,’ small veal links with carrots Vichy; and an ‘Espanole’ chorizo style with piperade. The ‘Viennoise’ made like a Kaisekrainer stuffed with cheese, is served over beer-steeped sauerkraut. It’s a nod to Markus Draxler, my former maitre d’ and definitely the smoothest Austrian gentleman in NYC at the time.

“I’m not going to name them all, but suffice it to say that the sausage roll call starts with ‘DB’s Dog.’ That’s all you need to know for now till we open at the end of May.”

Well, there is one more thing you might want to know. The resy line: 212-933-5300.