Iconic NYC Restaurant to Close

Famed New York City French restaurant Chanterelle will not reopen after a planned renovation. In a post memorializing the fine dining establishment, Josh Ozersky of The Feedbag writes that the food was wonderful, of course, but there was more to the place. “It’s a blow,” he writes. “The restaurant personified the mom-and-pop restaurant: haute cuisine as a labor of love. Its owners, David and Karen Waltuck, personified integrity, and the restaurant served a timeless, meticulous food that totally transcended all fashions and fads.” Ozersky’s late father was one of Chanterelle’s many devoted customers, praising it for “its light-flooded interior and the warm but considerate familiarity which extended downward from the Waltucks through the staff.” A year after the senior Ozersky died, his wife stopped in to have lunch with a friend: “Karen Waltuck wandered by their table to say hello, and instantly remembering her, asked where my father was. Carol explained what had happened, and Karen just burst out crying. That was the kind of people Chanterelle’s owners were, and that was the kind of place it was.”