The Union Square Cafe Cookbook, written by Danny Meyer and Michael Roman, contains 10 tasty blank cards and envelopes. Each card has a recipe printed on the back! It is available for sale at The Union Square Cafe Restaurant and at stores.
Here's Our Story....
Danny Meyer opened New York's Union Square Cafe in 1985 and his restaurant helped pioneer a new breed of American eatery where imaginative food and wine are paired with caring service, easy comfort and excellent value. A critical success from the outset, Union Square has garnered the New York Times' coveted three-star rating, is an eight-time winner of The Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence, and has seven times been voted one of New York City's Top 10 favorite restaurants by the Zagat Survey. Union Square Cafe is a premier DiRona Award winner, and earned a spot on Food & Wine Magazine's "Top 25 Restaurants in America." In 1992, Danny Meyer won the national James Beard Award for Excellence in Service and Hospitality.
In July 1994, Meyer opened a second Manhattan restaurant, Gramercy Tavern, a revival and renewal of the classic American Tavern, offering new American cuisine and hospitality in a historic landmark building. Within its first three months, Gramercy Tavern was touted as "the next great restaurant" by New York Magazine and singled out as "the warmest and most charming of all the new city restaurants in New York, Travel & Leisure wrote "Danny Meyer has turned the tables on four stars, combining friendly waiters, rustic dining rooms, and a menu that hops from foie gras to saut�ed cod,", and Esquire selected Gramercy Tavern as one of the best new restaurants in 1994. In The New York Times, Ruth Reichl said that "eating at Gramercy Tavern is a bit like drinking a great wine out of the barrel you can almost taste the future and it appears extremely promising." Just sixteen months later, Gramercy Tavern was awarded three stars by The New York Times. With Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern ranked #2 and #10 respectively in the 1996 Zagat Survey, Danny became the first-ever restaurateur to place two restaurants in the Zagat "Top 10".
Through the style of decor and food varies at Meyer's two Flatiron District restaurant, both are highly committed to providing outstanding quality, value and warm hospitality. Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern also share a strong philanthropic bent, particularly toward fighting hunger. Meyer serves on several hunger relief organization boards, including Share Our Strength, City Harvest and Food and Hunger Hotline. In 1992, he was featured in a national television commercial sponsored by American Express, to promote Share Our Strength. In 1994, he received Share Our Strength's Humanitarian of the Year Award for his role in the fight against hunger. In 1996, Danny won both the James Beard Humanitarian of the Year Award, and the IACP Restaurateur Award of Excellence.
Collaborating with Union Square Cafe's Chef/Partner, Michael Romano, Meyer co-authored the Union Square Cafe Cookbook, published by Harper Collins in October 1994. Featuring a collection of the restaurant's 160 most popular recipes, the book earned the IACP's Julia Child Award for best new cookbook by a first time author.
Union Square Cafe Restaurant History: Excerpted with permission from the introduction to the Union Square Cafe Cookbook, Harper Collins Publishers, 1994 by Danny Meyer and Michael Romano.
The Union Square Cafe Cookbook
Twenty-Five minutes before the mahogany door to Union Square Cafe swung open for the very first dinner on October 21, 1985. I broke into sobbing tears, brimming with bittersweet emotion. On the one hand, the restaurant's debut marked the realization of what had been a lifelong dream--ever since it was clear I didn't have what it takes to be a major league baseball player or play-by-play announcer. I had worked towards and focused on this very moment consciously for the past three years, and perhaps subconsciously for each of my first twenty-seven years. Nothing should have made me happier and prouder than this day. But something was troubling me. I had absolutely no business opening a one-hundred -twenty-five seat restaurant in the middle of New York City, and for the first time, at just that moment, I knew it.
I had grown up loving to cook, remembering practically every meal I had ever eaten, adoring festive family get-togethers, longing to try new restaurants and to return to old favorites, savoring the anticipation of every next meal, equating each one with great adventure. Friends and family found it odd when I would mix and match every ingredient and flavor on my dinner plate, trying to come up with something new, something better. A bite of lima beans always tasted better when I chewed them together with my mother's broiled chicken thighs with herbs. It was a gastronomic epiphany for me when as a six year old, I discovered the taste combination of buttered spinach noodles sprinkled with Kraft Parmesan.
By the time I was seven, my palate began to find exciting stimulation. My father--who always included me in his cooking exploits -- was in the business of custom-designing driving tours through the French countryside, and our Saint Louis home was like an ongoing foreign exchange program, hosting daughters of the Relais & Chateau patrons with whom he did business. Many meals at home had a French touch and no dinner began without its bottle of Beaujolais Villages plopped on the table. One day's entry highlighted my fascination with the "wonderful Quiche Lorraine" I had tasted in a private home in Nancy. In another, I remarked about loving "fraises des bois and crem fresh (sic)" in Saint Paul-de-Vence. this is not my first book on food!
Back at home, it had become my household responsibility to feed my family's pet dog, a neurotic and epileptic French poodle named Ratatouille. Third grade friends looked at me with disbelief when I tried to explain the meaning of his name. I enjoyed slipping "Rata" my leftover tastes of things like steak tartare, spicy tacos, Usinger's Milwaukee Braunschwieger and Wilno Kosher Salami, because it was important to me that he could enjoy my favorite foods in addition to his smelly Alpo. Once I even tried feeding him peanut butter. He ate it, but it took him at least ten minutes to quit smacking his tongue and get it down the hatch. In retrospect, Ratatouille was my first regular customer. It made me happy to please him with good food. I may not have known it then, but that's all it takes to be a successful restaurateur.
But success was along way off for Union Square Cafe. On that first night of business we served just twenty eight diners. Never mind that sixteen were well wishing guinea pig who had been invited with our compliments, another two had come primarily to teach us how to use our computerized cash registers, and of the ten intrepid diners who actually qualified as true restaurant pioneers, two ended up walking out of the restaurant hungry and angry because the food they ordered never arrived.
It was on that night that I realized what an orchestrational miracle it would one day be if we could ever figure out how to deliver the right food at the right temperature to the right person at the right time. I reasoned with myself that others before me had solved this mystery, but I knew that we were a long way off.
Union Square Cafe opened with an abundance of good intentions, yet with a sad dearth of hard restaurant experience -- from the top down. My idea of a successful restaurant had been one where I took the orders, cooked the food and then did the dishes. That quickly changed. I was a complete novice, having had only eight months training as a $250. a week assistant manager at a downtown Manhattan restaurant -- which is where I met Michael Romano for the first time. I had spent another handful of months chopping shallots, opening oysters and observing as a kitchen stagiere in Italy and Bordeaux.
Our first chef, a twenty six year old name Ali Barker, had certainly cooked in some good restaurants in his short career, but had no previous chef's experience, and in fact had never even attained the rank of sous-chef. The general manager, Gordon Dudash, had once been a decent bartender, but had never managed people, the head bartender, Paul Bolles-Beaven, came from a distinguished family of clerics yet had never mixed a cocktail, and the bookkeeper, who was undeniably honest, had never so much as balanced his own check book. And yes, the first waiter I hired thought it proper to use a corkscrew to open a bottle of champagne. For other reasons of ineptitude, he was also the first person I ever had to fire.
Union Square Cafe has come a long way since those early days. The restaurant has always attracted an ambitious and caring family of staff members bent on making good things even better. We've been fortunate to have a loyal following of friends who always let us know when we need to improve and are equally quick to praise us when we do.
When Union Square Cafe needed to find a chef in 1988, I immediately thought of Michael Romano. We had worked together for a short while in 1984 at the now defunct Pesca. Michael had just returned from several years cooking in Michelin-starred restaurants in France and Switzerland and I remember being terribly impresses with his knowledge, patience, crisp presence and talent. While Union Square Cafe's cooking was rustic and straightforward from day one, in Michael's hands comfort food had become excellent food.
My collaboration with Michael has included several trips abroad, dining in too many restaurants, tasting in more than our share of dark, dank wine cellars, innumerable seasonal menu changes and thousands of lunches and diners served. But this cookbook - an anthology of Union Square Cafe's cooking -- is the highlight of our years together and makes me especially proud.
Union Square Cafe Fact Sheet
Date Opened: October 1985
Type of Cuisine: American; with Rustic Italian Flair
Owner: Danny Meyer
Executive Chef, Partner: Michael Romano
Hours: Lunch Monday-Saturday, 12 noon-2:30 pm
Dinner Monday-Thursday 6-10:30 pm
Friday and Saturday 6-11:30 pm
Sunday dinner only
Price Range: Lunch Appetizers 4.95-9.50
Entrees 9.75-17.50
Dinner Appetizers 4.95-9.50
Entrees 18.50-24.50
Desserts 6.75
Signature Dishes: Iced Oysters on the Half Shell, Fried Calamari with Spicy Anchovy Mayonnaise; Tuna Burger with Ginger-Mustard Glaze; Grilled Marinated Fillet Mignon of Tuna; Mashed Turnips with Crispy Shallots; Creamy Polenta with mascarpone, Hot Garlic Potato Chips; Warm Banana Tart
Restaurant Specs: 3 Dining Rooms; 125 seats
Reservations accepted for parties of up to 8 people.
Lunch and Dinner served at the bar during service.
Dining Rooms are strictly non smoking
Zagat Survey 1996
Union Square Cafe / S
F-27
D-24
S-25
C-$50
"Hard to imagine a better combination of food, service and price" is the universal response to what many consider the best, and best value, "all around restaurant in the city for any occasion"; this Union Square "star" provides "consistently delicious" New American fare that "sparks the palate" in a "lovely", multiroom setting staffed by "people who care"; it's everything you could want" when dining out.
