WD50: End of an era?

wd50

Today I read about the closing of Wylie Dufresne’s restaurant WD50, in the Lower Eastside of Manhattan. Many will shed a tear, in fact many a stellar chef has paid their ‘respects’ to the iconic restaurant.

For the best part of 11 years Dufresne has ploughed his trade with how he thinks food should be cooked & presented. It truly was one man’s vision, but on Tuesday he tweeted to his 3,600 followers:

Nov 30 will be our final night of service at wd50. Come celebrate with us for the next 173 days. Stay tuned!!

wd50 closure tweet

WD50 – Chef & Owner, Wylie Dufresne announces on Twitter the closure of WD50.

I’ve eaten at WD50 quite recently, & to be honest it was hard to see what all the adulation was about. I closed my review with the statement:

Clearly Wylie Dufrense is being stretched too far with the new outlet & WD50 is suffering because of it, becoming a parody of what it once was.

Its not that I didn’t ‘get it’, I did; it was just poor. So many people said to me that they’d had great meals there, & that I was unfortunate. But in my mind the world has moved on, & as much as the food establishment lamented the loss of El Bulli in 2011, the truth is its time had come. Whilst Jeff Gordinier of the New York Times celebrates WD50 by saying:

At WD-50, Mr. Dufresne and his team weren’t content to spread mayonnaise; instead, they fried it.

And this is the point. It’s no longer good enough to manipulate food in this manner; the restaurant going public now demand the purity in food that Nordic cuisine & its ilk has brought us. Yes, it amazes & dazzles, but we’ve all moved on.

Sadly for Dufresne and his merry band of cooks, their destiny was taken from their hands by a property developer. Although he has stated that:

I haven’t been particularly eager to look at what my headstone’s going to look like.

There’s no doubting that 50 Clinton Street will become one of those places where people will go to pay their respects. But as Dufresne thinks through his next move; & let’s face it he wont be short of offers from the larger hotels in NYC for a trophy restaurant. He says:

I have a great love of fine dining and I hope to continue that.

We don’t quite know yet where we’re going. It’s like they say, ‘You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here’.

I’d like to wish him & his team all the best for the future, where-ever that maybe.


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