Pour Tony: A Sneak Peek at De Vie in NYC
Paris’ Next Great Bar Comes To New York, Before It’s Even Open
Barney O'Kane and bartenders
Alex Francis and Barney O’Kane are known for their work at Little Red Door, the Paris-based bar that, like clockwork, gets voted one of the 10 or so best bars in the world every year from the folks at 50 Best. Now they’re on their own and getting ready to launch De Vie, their own bar/restaurant, with a grand opening scheduled for the fall and a pop-up preview scheduled for smack dab in the middle of the Olympics this summer (yikes!). But before any of that, they took their act on the road and brought it to the bar at Eleven Madison Park — the NYC institution that’s won a few truckloads of awards itself over the years — for a collaboration between the two crews.
The Drinks
Barney O'Kane making a martini
With its planned emphasis on storytelling, sustainability, and innovation, De Vie’s model sounds a lot like EMP’s, and what’s wrong with that? I had a primo seat at the bar, next to fellow scribe Gina Pace, from where we watched Barney and De Vie’s Hugues Pollier do their thing alongside EMP’s own Rich Millwater. Alex, meanwhile, oversaw the crowd with EMP beverage director Sebastian Tollius. The Botanist Gin sponsored the shindig, so five of the six cocktails (each with bespoke food pairing) were gin-based, but they ran the gamut.
There was a “martini” with gin, Chardonnay, mushroom dashi, citrus oil and algae oil (!) accompanying some of the greatest soba I’d ever tasted; another cocktail, simply called Zucchini, featured The Botanist Rested gin (cask-aged for six months) with the New York Cider Company’s cider, a parsley tincture, and yes, roasted zucchini juice. Don’t know if I’d eat something like that but in a glass, it was delicious. And we finished things off with a liquid homage to apple cider donuts, made with Rested Gin, apple cider, vegan butter and oat syrup — and a glass dusted with powdered sugar, natch.
Zucchini cocktail
It was a hell of a night, and I was so sad to see it end that I returned a couple of hours later with spirits all-stars Guy Brennan, founder of Procera Gin, and one man wrecking crew Philip Duff in tow. The staff was confused but welcoming, and I scored a non-alcoholic nightcap from Rich Millwater. At EMP, you see, the hospitality never ends.