How Le Veau d'Or Became New York City's Hottest Restaurant—Again
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Opened in 1937, Le Veau d'Or is the oldest French bistro in New York City. After being closed for five years, it got a new lease on life when it reopened on July 16 under the leadership of chefs Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr.
Hanson and Nasr, who met while working for Daniel Boulud and went on to work for Keith McNally at Balthazar and Minetta Tavern before striking out on their own with Frenchette and Le Rock, have lovingly restored the Upper East Side bistro frequented over the years by notable figures including Jacqueline Onassis, Lee Radziwill, Bobby Short, Truman Capote, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, and Orson Welles.
While the restaurant opened (and was awarded four stars by Craig Claiborne of the New York Times in 1937), it's been in the hands of one family since Robert Treboux bought it—and the building in which it sits on East 60th Street—in 1985. Treboux, who was born in France and worked in restaurants in New York including Henri Soulé's Le Pavillon beginning in the 1950s, died in 2012.
Treboux's death prompted Hanson and Nasr to contact his daughter, Catherine, who owns the building and lives upstairs. She wasn’t ready to sell Le Veau d'Or then, but they stayed in touch. Catherine ("Cathy" to many of her regulars) oversaw the dining room for several years, but by 2019, she was ready to pass the baton to Hanson and Nasr. The reopening was delayed by the pandemic, among other factors, but now "the Golden Calf" is ready to receive diners five days a week.
Guests will find a room that seats 55 with red banquettes, wood paneling, and red-and-white-checkered tablecloths, just like when the restaurant opened. The flooring is a red and black pattern from the 1960s version of the restaurant. A painting of a sleeping calf ("le veau dort") that has hung on one of the walls for years was left untouched. There's a bar with five seats, available for drinks only. A private dining room that seats 20 and is located on the second floor will be available for bookings starting in September. (It was previously a hair salon and then a private residence, which presented rezoning issues that added to the renovation timeline.)
"I think for people who have dined here it will feel familiar," Nasr says. "That was very important."
The menu is prix-fixe and three-and-a-half courses (the half course is a salad served between the main course and dessert) and priced at $125. Among the 10 appetizers, 10 entrees, and five desserts, expect to see old-school bistro dishes like escargots, pâté en croûte, and frog legs persillade alongside classics for which the restaurant was known, like mackerel au vin blanc and tripes à la mode.
Along with Hanson and Nasr, the kitchen team includes Charlie Izenstein as chef de cuisine, executive chef Jeff Teller, and pastry chef Michelle Palazzo. Jorge Riera, who oversaw the wine lists at Frenchette and Le Rock, and Sarah Morrissey, who created the cocktail list at Frenchette, are handling the libations.
Longtime patrons of the restaurant may recognize a familiar face in Derek Summerlin, Robert Treboux's grandson and Catherine Treboux's son, who is maître d'hôtel. He previously worked at Le Rock and Eleven Madison Park.
But what really distinguishes Le Veau d'Or is its history, which Hanson and Nasr say they hope their new iteration honors. There are perhaps no better judges of that than its regulars, many of whom had strong opinions of what the future might hold for the restaurant when it closed for renovation five years ago.
Below, in interviews conducted mostly in 2019, regulars reminisce about the old iteration of Le Veau d'Or and express their hopes and expectations for its new incarnation.
Gay Talese, Writer
I’ve lived a block away from Le Veau D'Or for more than 60 years. I have a house on 61st Street between Park and Lexington, and I have been going to Le Veau D'Or since I first moved into the neighborhood.
I started going more regularly around 2000, and that's when I started to get to know Catherine better. As I got to know her better, I got her to save a certain table for me. She knew how I liked the gin martini made—she gave me not only the gin martini but also the shaker. I loved that because you had an extra drop or two. It was the front table—a little table for four—tucked into the window. I'd meet a number of people there: Liz Smith, Peter Duchin the bandleader and his wife, Virginia Coleman, all sorts of people.
I go out every night of the week to restaurants and have for 70 years. I work all day alone; I'm a writer. I never have lunch with people. I don't go to restaurants for the food, I go for escape from solitude. I like to go out around 7 p.m. to have a martini, maybe not as grand a martini as Catherine made, but a martini.
The restaurant had this charm about it, but it was not a friendly restaurant until Catherine became the face of it. Then it became one of those familiar haunts that guaranteed a friendly night and a good meal. It's gratifying to know that the restaurant is not going to be empty now.
André Jammet, Restaurateur
The Veau d'Or was the number one French bistro in New York. The business they had at one point was unbelievable. Veau d'Or used to make between 200 and 300 covers a day. It was the cooking of Le Pavillon and La Caravelle but in a bistro form. It was really the in place.
After Robert bought it, it was his salon, his private dining room, and then Cathy took over and everybody was going there for Cathy. She is a fantastic woman. We were going there for her, not really for the cooking. It was a tradition.
The name Veau d'Or is very important for New York. It’s the Rao's of the French bistro. You couldn't get in because it was always booked. The food was really top.
It would be like if I reopened La Caravelle today. There is a certain nostalgia, which is very important. Cathy managed to keep the food at a level that was acceptable. She would tell you that. She couldn't afford to have a well-known chef. The kitchen was really big because when they were making 200 covers in the French classic style, the kitchen had to be big.
Thank God the name is going to survive, this is wonderful.
Paul Freedman, Yale history professor and food historian
I am very glad that the Veau d'Or will go on. It is the last link with Le Pavillon and Henri Soulé, who restored French cuisine in the U.S. in the 1940s to 1960s, creating a gracious and delightful cuisine that was almost extinguished but is now undergoing a certain vogue. Down to its name (the Golden Calf, which also sounds like "the calf sleeps"), the restaurant is a living recollection of an almost vanished civilization.
André Bishop, Artistic Director of Lincoln Center Theater
One thing that made it so special, regardless of any discussions of food or decor or service, was that it was the last of a kind of dying breed of old French restaurants.
I grew up in New York, and my generation of old French restaurants have long since closed, so for me, having gone to Le Veau d'Or with my mother as a young man, it simply reminded me of the kinds of places I used to go out to dinner with my parents.
It was a wonderful holdover from the past. It was a past that a lot of New Yorkers, including myself, really loved. It had the virtue of being small, it had the virtue of being able to make a reservation easily, it wasn't snobby or snooty, and the food never changed in all the years I can remember, except for the occasional special. There was something reassuring about its continuity.
I had friends who thought the food wasn't good, but I always thought that had those same dishes been put in front of you in a slightly spiffier, fancier looking room everyone would have thought this is the best food in the world. The room looked a little shabby, and therefore some people thought the food was shabby, but I did not.
I'm thrilled that it's reopening because when I heard the news there was this sort of chain letter of friends who used to all go to Le Veau d’Or saying, "this is a disaster and what are we going to do." We didn't know it was reopening at first, we thought that it was closing forever. My terror is that now we won't be able to get in!
Betsy Gotbaum, Executive Director of Citizens Union
My father, who was at J. Walter Thompson, used to take me to Le Veau d'Or for lunch. It was so grown up to go to a very French restaurant. This was back in the early '60s. I was a kid. I remember going there and it was just charming and very French.
We loved that it was quiet and we would get a table in the back. There was like one waiter—that was it. There were delicious dishes. The skate; I never had skate any place else in New York City, but it was just delicious. It was simple.
What was lovely was the quiet atmosphere, the fact that you could hear yourself talk and that you could have a lovely meal like a civilized human being, and you didn't have that ghastly music beaming at you.
Patricia Bosworth, Writer
Every time I went I always would see somebody I knew. It was like an extension of Elaine's in some ways. Whenever I went there I would very often see Gay Talese, Peter Duchin. Sometimes Gay would insist that we join his table and so we would, my partner Doug and I. It was a little club for all of us—Steven Aronson, Jonathan Becker, Fran Lebowitz, all of whom have been friends and colleagues. A lot of media people. I was always running into people I knew.
I remember a dinner Doug and I hosted with Robert Morgenthau and his wife Lucinda and Joyce Carol Oates and her husband. Liz Smith and I used to have dinner almost once a month at Le Veau d'Or near the end of Liz's life.
Peter Duchin, Musician
I've been a devotee of Le Veau d'Or forever. Where else can one see virtually the same menu today that you saw when one was a kid?
There was something about it that was very cozy. New restaurants have music, they changed their menu to something indescribably modern, and this actually was kind of a thread to the past—that's why we loved it.
Every restaurant seems to have music for some reason. And as a musician I shouldn't say such a thing, I guess, but you could always talk in Le Veau d'Or and hear yourself and have conversation. There were quite often spirited conversations going on and it was just a very pleasant place to be.
Cathy Treboux, Former Proprietor and Current Landlord
I got to Le Veau d'Or when I was 28. I was there for 34 years. I took a break to raise a couple of sons. My father bought the restaurant when he was retirement age. He had the vision to realize that you couldn't survive unless you owned the building. When the second proprietor wanted to retire in 1985, my father bought the building, the restaurant and the apartments above it.
There was an intimacy to the Veau D'Or that today you don't really find anywhere else. People would say it's a club, and that's why people enjoyed it. They all knew each other, they table hopped. I've known everybody for so long that I would introduce them to each other. I had all the people who were passionate about music or literature. It's a quiet restaurant. There was conversation. You could hear.
In the old house account books are the names of Marlene Dietrich, Jackie Kennedy, Lee Radziwill, Bill Blass, Clay Felker, Mrs. Oscar de la Renta. It was a big deal to come here in the '70s. Martin Ginsburg, the husband of Ruth Bader Ginsberg—a friend said it used to be his favorite restaurant [Editor's Note: a U.S. Supreme Court spokeswoman confirmed that according to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Le Veau d'Or was indeed Martin Ginsburg’s favorite restaurant]. The Lauders, the Newhouses, [Bill] Paley, Arthur Schlessinger.
Starting with James Villas and then with Anthony Bourdain, who I would say saved our lives, there was a turnaround where I could have gotten more business if I had gone online. In our dreams, meaning my father's and mine, I would have been running Le Veau d'Or for another 20 years. Unfortunately, everything has changed, and I couldn't do what needed to be done, which was to update everything to the 21st century. I shortened the hours. I wouldn't take more than four people at a table, because I was the one serving them. I wouldn't do parties. At some point, it didn't make financial sense.
I felt it should go on and I think that Riad and Lee are the best fit for the place. Originally there were two men who started the place, so I think it's great that it's going back to that.
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