The St. Regis New York

Chef Gray Kunz of Lespinasse Dies at Age 63 | Eater

"A showpiece restaurant housed in the St. Regis Hotel from 1991 until its 2003 closing, this four-star dining room combined over-the-top opulence with fearless culinary invention and brutal kitchen discipline. Under its celebrated chef it became a proving ground for a generation of cooks—Andrew Carmellini, Floyd Cardoz, Corey Lee and others—known for intense, boot-camp training, obsessive mise en place, nightly discarding of stocks and sauces, and a custom, million-dollar kitchen built to the chef’s exacting specifications. The cuisine nominally read as French but was among the first high-end New York services to fully integrate Asian ingredients and techniques, producing layered, balanced dishes that critics called revelatory; menus featured items such as lobster in consommé, coriander‑crusted salmon, black bass with kaffir‑lime reduction, venison medallions with juniper and coriander, and elaborate truffle‑spiked preparations. The operation was also famously expensive—food costs at times approached 50 percent—and its history includes a notable labor controversy in which the firing of a hostess after a harassment complaint provoked a front‑of‑house walkout; the chef left months later. Despite its financial struggles and eventual closure—attributed to 9/11, union demands, shifting tastes, and operating costs—the restaurant’s influence endured through its alumni and the ubiquitous nine‑inch working spoon the chef designed there." - Amanda Kludt