“For me, it was always going to be a French restaurant,” says Greg Baxtrom, of the follow-up to Olmsted, the Prospect Heights restaurant he opened in 2016. Like many chefs, Baxtrom reveres a certain kind of time-honored, classical French cooking: He will happily geek out over veloutés, quenelles, the French canon, and all-things-Escoffier. But, like many chefs, he also knows that most of the ideas in Le Guide Culinaire aren’t exactly primed for modern palates: “It’s all so heavy,” he admits.
So, he faced the same problem that other chefs face when trying to update French recipes that are both esteemed, and also a little frumpy: How do you stay true to the spirit and history of that food, while turning it into the kind of shareable and, yes, affordable food that people might actually want to eat in 2019? “I didn’t want it to be, like, French tapas, or obnoxious small plates,” Baxtrom explains, “but how do you serve two ounces of real, dry-aged ribeye without it seeming silly on a plate?”
The answer, as Baxtrom saw it, was to embrace some ideas from the yakitori restaurants he loves. So when his new restaurant, Maison Yaki, opens on Wednesday night — directly across the street from Olmsted — diners will find a menu that includes starters like “tempura frog legs Provencal” and escargots in shiso butter, as well as charcoal-grilled skewers like lobster with sauce Américaine, and chicken breast finished with sauce Allemande, which is classically a light stock thickened with roux, and fortified with eggs. “No one makes sauce Allemande anymore,” Baxtrom points out, with almost certain accuracy. “It’s super, super old-school Escoffier.”
Masion Yaki is not, Baxtrom points out, his take on an authentic yakitori restaurant. “I’m not saying I’m doing anything better than anyone else,” he explains. “It’s very much a French restaurant that borrows some technique from yakitori-style dining.”
Another thing that Maison Yaki is not: a big-money expansion from a chef whose profile is considerably higher than it was three years ago. In fact, Baxtrom is doubling down on the value proposition that he thinks made Olmsted a hit. “Hopefully,” he says, “this is a restaurant that’s even more affordable, with less of a wait time, and food that’s maybe even more familiar and crave-able.”
Nothing on Maison Yaki’s opening menu will cost more than $9, and Baxtrom’s hope is that the gentle pricing will encourage people to try lots of different dishes. “You can eat here, try eight or nine things, have a lower check average than Olmsted and still have had real, no-bullshit steak, lobster, and scallop.” (Those scallops, by the way, are served with sauce Maltaise, another Escoffier-era classique that Baxtrom updates by hitting beurre blanc with blood-orange reduction, blood-orange preserves, and red yuzukusho.)
Other skewers might include asparagus and bearnaise sauce, pork belly Dijonnaise, ribeye with bordelaise sauce, and a take on duck a l’orange that arrives with orange sauce in duck jus designed to look, uncannily, like an egg yolk in tare. The menu is rounded out with things like a beef-tongue “sando” with gribiche, salmon tartare, baguettes with yuzukosho-spiked butter; and a salad of goat cheese with ash made from pulp that’s leftover after Olmsted’s staff makes that restaurant’s carrot crêpes. “We juice so much carrot over there,” Baxtrom says, “we should buy a carrot farm at this point.” (Drinks, meanwhile, will include draft cocktails, as well as table-side pastis service, sake, and plenty of French wine.)
Most of the Olmsted team is also involved in Maison Yaki, such as wine director Zwann Grays, head bartender Andrew Zerrip, and managing partner Max Katzenberg. And even though the food and feel are very different from Olmsted, the overall approach isn’t (the size isn’t, either: Olmsted has 53 seats, plus the garden. Maison Yaki has 52, plus a back garden with a pétanque court). “I’m not abandoning my principles to open a $4 million restaurant in Manhattan!” Baxtrom says. “I want to do the opposite of that.”
That said, Baxtrom does have another idea simmering for a restaurant that he wants to open … someday: “Greg’s Over Easy,” he jokes. “It will just be a classic greasy-spoon diner.” When I point out that he could also use the name for a big-money breakfast buffet in Vegas, he laughs. “Yes! It will be at the Bellagio, and it will be $120 — when I sell out, that’s how you’ll know.”
