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Also this issue: Hurry Up and Wait |
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October 17-23, 2002
food
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I might not know much about France’s Franche-Comté region of Epinal. But if it’s anything like what native-son chef Jean-Marie Lacroix envisioned for his signature salon in the Rittenhouse Hotel, it’s a lush and swanky locale.
Designer Meg Rodgers has created Lacroix's duplex-restaubar with Seuratlike post-Impressionist strokes, pulling in elements of Rittenhouse Square's plush greenery -- viewed through Lacroix's long windows. The entrance is a grand stone archway, followed by a similar long path, loomed over by what seems like a topiary until you enter the massive dining room. This isn't a jungle's greenery or a Herzogian fantasy. Instead, it's a lovers' walk, a stone vestibule laced with somber candles, an oak and steel wine case and a Holy Grail-ish fountain sprouting everything from Birds of Paradise to fruits to desserts like Jean-Marie's Chocolat Lacroix -- the orange, chocolate and cinnamon scent of which fills the room.
Once inside the dining room, the entire space, from the walls to the rice-paper chandeliers, is awash in ambers and warm-brushed beiges. The upholstered walls and rich green velvet seats are given light from a single candle on each of Lacroix's tables, or elegant pendants and sconces that line the bilevel room. The furniture feels '40s Franco-Asian, the same cosmopolitan sense of fine dining left for dead until Apocalypse Now made it en vogue.
By now you'll feel like a prince in his castle -- until you see the kinglike private dining room near the kitchen. Here, fine French plates and flatware line the walls and finer linens loom atop long tables, all full of Old World decadence. The only thing that interrupts the Old World with the New World is the bustling kitchen -- a room as hyper as the rest of Lacroix is calm.
If this is the world that Jean-Marie left behind, we should be sad for him and delighted for the rest of us that he did so.
Lacroix at The Rittenhouse, 210 W. Rittenhouse Sq., 215-790-2533.
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