Edition: U.S. / Global

The Quilted Giraffe Joins the Dinosaurs

Published: December 30, 1992

TOMORROW evening, the champagne toasts at the Quilted Giraffe will welcome 1993 on a poignant note. In the first dawn of the new year, the granite tables in this sleek, trend-setting luxury restaurant in Manhattan, one of America's best, will be cleared for good.

Now, the connoisseurs who for years delighted in the lush beluga caviar beggar's purses, the surprisingly delicious wasabi pizza, the gossamer chocolate souffle tempered with a scoop of ice cream and the buttery pecan squares will have to rely on Proustian taste memories.

Barry Wine, 50, the self-taught chef and co-owner whose original turn of palate coined a host of memorable dishes, insists he will never open another restaurant. His wife, Susan, 46, who has been his partner in the Quilted Giraffe from the beginning, is breathing a sigh of relief over what she described as an unbelievably demanding job. The dedication of both Wines made their restaurant one of the early standard bearers of American excellence when the field was far less crowded than it is today.

"The closing of the Quilted Giraffe is the end of an era," said Clark Wolf, a restaurant consultant in New York. "It turned the innocence, the exploring that Americans did in food in the 1970's into a seriousness of purpose and success in the 80's, and it will be missed."

The Wines are closing the Quilted Giraffe permanently because the Sony Corporation, which owns the building on Madison Avenue at 55th Street where the restaurant is situated, has planned major construction work for the site. The restaurant would have had to close, at least temporarily. The Wines sold their lease to Sony for what they said was a seven-figure amount.

"We don't want there to be any confusion about why this is happening," Mrs. Wine said. "It presents an opportunity for us that is not likely to happen again."

As American restaurants go, an establishment like the Quilted Giraffe is also unlikely to happen again. It was about much more than the beggar's purses, those tender crepes filled with the finest caviar and creme fraiche and tied in a bundle with a strip of chive that have been mimicked by dozens of chefs and fetched a $50 surcharge on the $75 prix-fixe dinner menu.

Although it's easy to focus on the stunning price tags that made ingredients like beluga caviar, foie gras and truffles possible, what's more important is that the Quilted Giraffe epitomized refined American dining as it was coming into its own.

"The Quilted Giraffe was one of the first serious luxury restaurants on the French model that had no pretense of being French," said David Waltuck, who opened Chanterelle in SoHo in late 1979, about six months after the Quilted Giraffe opened at Second Avenue and 50th Street.

Like many Americans who became passionate about food in the mid-1970's, the Wines looked first to France but soon began flexing some serious American muscle. For example, after tasting leg of lamb baked in hay at Les Pres et les Sources d'Eugenie, a Michelin three-star restaurant in Eugenie-les-Bains, France, Mr. Wine came up with his own version: lamb baked in corn husks.

For the Wines, the model was not the bistro or brasserie that is so in vogue today, but the three-star temple of gastronomy where every element, even the flower arrangement in the powder room, was the ultimate in elegance. They became obsessed with such details.

But within that deluxe context, their menu was written in English, they used locally grown ingredients as much as possible, and they even raised some of their own flowers and herbs. They had a crew of Americans in the kitchen and hired American waiters and captains, expecting them to perform with as much finesse as their French counterparts at restaurants like La Grenouille. The wine list emphasized California.

The Quilted Giraffe, which opened with 60 seats in a warm, elegant jewel-box setting on Second Avenue in June 1979, had relocated from New Paltz, N.Y., where, since 1975, it had been in business as a country French restaurant. The Wines, both from the Midwest, had moved to New Paltz from Manhattan in 1970 in pursuit of a simpler way of life.

Mr. Wine, a graduate of Tufts University and the University of Chicago Law School, had worked at a Wall Street law firm and set up his own practice in New Paltz. Mrs. Wine, a graduate of Barnard College, opened an art gallery and a dress shop.

A tea room followed, and it soon became a country French restaurant with Mr. Wine in the kitchen and Mrs. Wine at the door. They were going to name it Maxime's, but settled on the Quilted Giraffe when they hung some baby quilts adorned with giraffes as decorations.

The early menus, listing chicken cordon bleu and a salad with canned mandarin oranges, were truly quaint by today's standards. But at the same time, the Wines were already pursuing some novel ideas, like serving wine by the glass and creating special wine dinners. They were quick studies, and soon, after a few eye-opening trips to France, they began serving more elaborate and imaginative food.