When the writer Robert Gerber moved to New York in 1979, he met an artist named Andy Warhol and a wealthy socialite named James Mellon Curley. The three of them, always looking for a good party, became fast friends.
Their evening routine included a drink in the Plaza hotel, dancing at Studio 54 and dinner at Le Veau d’Or, a jewel box of a French restaurant on the Upper East Side covered in wood panels and a homey painting of a sleeping calf. There were more famous French restaurants nearby, like La Grenouille and La Caravelle, yet this one drew guests like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Orson Welles.
Le Veau d’Or, which opened in 1937, “was much smaller and much less pretentious,” recalled Mr. Gerber, 69. “You could go here and have a great French meal for much less money.”
As the bistro scene moved downtown, Le Veau d’Or became more passé than posh — until this past July, when it was reopened to great fanfare by the chefs Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr, best known for their dynamic, perennially packed neo-bistros, Frenchette and Le Rock. I recently met Mr. Gerber at the new Veau d’Or, where he was excited just to be back.
ImageLe Veau d’Or opened in 1937 and drew many celebrity guests, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.Credit...Le Veau d’OrImageThe new owners sought to refurbish the restaurant — restoring its checked tablecloths and wood paneling — but not redesign it.Credit...Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesIt was the same, low-slung dining room, he observed, but with shinier red banquettes, crisper checked tablecloths and cute touches like calf-shaped creamers repurposed as miniature planters. He loved the duck, whose skin crackled like a potato chip and sang with peppercorns, and the lobster, served chilled in its shell with tiny cubes of radish and fennel. But the place somehow felt different, he said. It wasn’t as quiet. He didn’t see many people he knew.
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