For foodies, it’s like seeing Elvis back onstage.
After quitting the restaurant scene he conquered with the much-worshiped Chanterelle, David Waltuck is behind the stove again.
Elan, his new Flatiron hotspot, has been packing them in since a joyous June opening, with longtime fans scrambling to book scarce tables.
Waltuck broke hearts in 2009 when he and wife Karen closed Chanterelle, their Tribeca temple to unfussy gastronomy, after financing fell through on a high-ticket renovation.
But maybe it was for the best, he says now.
“I needed a break,” says Waltuck, who landed a corporate job opening burger joints and sports bars for dining behemoth Ark Restaurants. “The closing of Chanterelle was not something I wanted. I thought somehow, someone would hand me another restaurant. That didn’t happen.”
A native New Yorker, Waltuck, now 59, was just 25 when he and Karen opened Chanterelle in a storefront on then-desolate Grand St. in 1979. The couple decamped for grander digs on Tribeca’s Harrison St. a decade later.
Served in a sparsely elegant room, Waltuck’s boundary-breaking food shook up the city’s restaurant scene. Before “nouvelle cuisine” became a unfortunate buzzword, Waltuck preached simplicity over showmanship, letting sumptuous products do the talking in clean, minimalist preparations.
Diners treated Chanterelle as a religious experience; crusty uptown stalwarts like Le Cirque and Le Bernardin suddenly found a rival below 14th St.
“Chanterelle was groundbreaking in location and concept,” says Izabela Wojcik of the James Beard Foundation in Manhattan. “The stark, vaulted dining room with big strokes of luxe touches, the undeniable downtown New York cool and the connection to art were as dramatic as David Waltuck’s spare, elegant cuisine.”
Those halcyon days seemed a world away in recent years. Ark Restaurants operates people-pleasing eateries such as “fast food concepts, catering operations and wholesale and retail bakeries,” the company says on its website. In New York, Ark runs the Bryant Park Grill and Clyde Frazier’s Wine and Dine near the Javits Center. It also has burger bars in Atlantic City and Vegas.
That’s no place for a genius.
“I was limited in terms of what I could do creatively, but it got me outside of the Chanterelle mold,” Waltuck says. “It made me more relaxed, and shook up my perspective on food.”
Eventually, Ark’s corporate-kitchen approach began to chafe like a polyester apron.
“It was a great job, but working for someone else means you might have a great idea and get told it’s not going to work,” Waltuck says. “That was something to get used to.”
To open Elan, Waltuck went back to the future, partnering with trusted lieutenant George Stinson — Chanterelle’s general manager for more than a decade. Karen Waltuck, who always graced Chanterelle’s front of the house, bailed on restaurants completely and is now a social worker helping find work for people with disabilities.
“George has pushed me to move away from Chanterelle part II or III. And that’s a good thing,” Waltuck muses. “Part of me still doesn’t want to let go.”
Despite Waltuck’s push to reinvent, he couldn’t resist basing much of Elan’s menu on Chanterelle’s. Lush appetizers like stuffed zucchini blossoms and grilled seafood sausage both echo longtime signatures. Other dishes reflect Waltuck’s longstanding fascination with Chinese cuisine, like General Tso’s sweetbreads, a witty spin on a Big Apple takeout staple.
“I’m more relaxed because I don’t feel like I have to make a certain kind of impression,” Waltuck says.
