When Soul Food Met Daniel Boulud
This is the era of the Exclusive Dining Experience, which is marketing speak for a meal you’ll never get to enjoy: hot reservations you can’t get, Michelin-star pop-ups you can’t afford, intimate chef nights to which you’re not invited. Two years ago, Charles Gabriel, of the Harlem soul-food franchise Charles Pan-Fried Chicken, collaborated with Daniel Boulud. “It was funny because Daniel Boulud is Daniel Boulud, but everyone’s saying hello to Charles,”a chef named Quié (rhymes with “twee”), who runs Gabriel’s business, said recently. The dinner collab cost two hundred dollars and was held at Bar Boulud. It was great, but something didn’t feel right. “I’m pretty dope,” Quié said. “Which has got me through amazing doors and into amazing kitchens with some amazing chefs. But my community don’t get a chance to partake in their delicious food.”
Last week, Quié, who has the build of a refrigerator and the energy of a hummingbird, was at the Charles Pan-Fried Chicken on 145th Street, preparing for another collaboration. He was inviting celebrated chefs to take over for one weekend each month. The meals are open to anyone, to-go, and cost twenty-five dollars. “It’s not a money-maker. At all,” Quié said. “But it’s not about that. It’s like when Jay-Z brought Oprah to Brooklyn.”
This weekend’s chef, Lana Lagomarsini, met Quié at a picnic table outside. She was there to test her dish: tamarind barbecue-glazed oxtails with chowchow, which would pair with Quié’s Rasta pasta. Lagomarsini, a semifinalist on “Top Chef,” has worked at Gramercy Tavern, Momofuku Ko, and Francis Mallmann’s Garzón, in Uruguay. She joined an ongoing lineup—ten chefs so far—that has included Ayo Balogun, of the Dept of Culture, in Bed-Stuy, and Serigne Mbaye, whose New Orleans restaurant, Dakar NOLA, is considered among the best in the country. “This is like the Justice League,” Quié said.
Lagomarsini laughed. “I’m just regular-degular.”
“No, you are in the catalogue of dopeness,” Quié said.
Lagomarsini, who wore gold earrings and has arm tattoos, got organized. Quié kept getting up, sitting down, calling out to people in the street, checking on the kitchen, and whipping out his phone to film promotional videos. Lagomarsini seemed used to it: chefs.
She lives nearby. “I come here myself once a week,” she said. “There’s a three-piece, you get two sides, and it’s eighteen bucks. It’s very shareable, but also not shareable, you know?” Lagomarsini’s cooking celebrates the Black diaspora. “I get a kick out of tracking down recipes of old Black chefs,” she said. She has unearthed dishes by Thomas Downing, known in the nineteenth century as the Oyster King of New York, and by James Hemings, born into slavery, who was Thomas Jefferson’s chef in France and helped introduce America to macaroni and cheese. Lagomarsini also discovered material about her ancestors. “I found out for sure my family was enslaved,” she said. “I found the name of our owners, and where the family is. They’re still alive.” This summer, she’s opening her first restaurant, a fourteen-seat supper club on the Upper East Side. She named it Creola, after her grandmother.
Quié popped out of the kitchen and said, “Showtime!” There were four burners going. Quié had prepped Lagomarsini’s dishes and was working on an Alfredo sauce. “I based it off Olive Garden’s,” he said. They assessed the oxtails: too small. “I want huge oxtails for the weekend,” Quié said.
The final side dish was Gabriel’s cornbread, made with plantains and drizzled with cane-sugar-infused honey. Growing up in Harlem, Quié idolized Gabriel, the son of sharecroppers and one of twenty kids. “Same parents, by the way,” Quié said. “Everyone had chores. His job was to catch the chicken, kill the chicken, pluck the chicken.” During the pandemic, Quié was furloughed from a Dave & Buster’s. He approached Gabriel, who is seventy-eight, about cooking for him. Gabriel told him he’d had to close the restaurant. “I was, like, ‘Nah,’ ” Quié said. They partnered to bring it back.
Lagomarsini slathered the oxtails with the glaze, which was dangerously sticky. “It’s a blessing and a curse,” she said. “One time it spilled all over the trunk of my car.” Quié attended to two burners while running around recording Lagomarsini on his phone. Lagomarsini dolloped more glaze and said, “Want me to plate up, chef?”
She displayed the dish as Quié directed her through a promo. “How do I say this properly—you’re gonna describe it sexy-like,” he said. They returned to the picnic table to taste. Lagomarsini offered a bite to Quié’s nephew Poppa, who works at the restaurant. He shyly declined.
“Boss, please!” Quié said. “Grab a fork.” Poppa sat down. “All right, try the oxtail first,” Quié said. “Sauce. Now eat the chowchow. Now take another oxtail. Pasta now. O.K., now you can have the cornbread.”
Quié was delighted with the oxtail: “Oh, my God. It’s sauced perfectly.”
“Cuteness, right?” Lagomarsini said.
As they ate, an older woman with a cane stopped on the corner and yelled out, “What is that?”
“It’s some oxtail,” Lagomarsini called.
“I’ll be back,” the woman said.
“You better be back!” Quié said.
The woman was done bantering: “I better get my cornbread.”
Both chefs replied, “Yes, ma’am.” ♦