Is the Frog Pond drying up? That was the nickname for New York’s most famous high-end French restaurant, La Grenouille, long known for its fashion and power crowds, attracting  everyone from Charlie Chaplin, Sir Laurence Olivier and Paul Newman to  Liz Taylor, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra and Mick Jagger, and (below) Jackie and Aristotle Onassis.
         Now, closed since last fall, La Grenouille’s is finally re-opening this month, but the building is for sale. It brings up again the question of whether or not fine French dining is fading. Of all the city’s surviving classic French restaurants of dozens that once dotted midtown Manhattan—dubbed the “Le and La crowd”—La Grenouille was immune to culinary trends and changes in the way people preferred to eat out in the 21st century.        
        Famous for its huge flower displays, archaic gilded luxury and snooty waiters in tuxedos and overseen by the Masson family since opening in 1962, its clientele was rigorously faithful and for the next three decades grew an increasing number of Asians to its tables.
         In their heyday Monsieur Charles and Madame Gisele would prowl their dining room as if giving a papal blessing to those guests they favored and a stiffened chin to those they did not. The death of the senior Massons drove their sons Philippe and Charles Jr (below) to titanic battles of will, with Philippe finally taking control until its closure.
         And so, La Grenouille follows in the wake of other illustrious French restaurants like Lutèce, La Caravelle, La Côte Basque and Le Périgord. Their demise seemed to indicate that that effusive style of dining, with starched white tablecloths, red banquettes, vases of roses and open display of cold appetizers was due to a younger, less sophisticated public’s distaste for formality and for what was perceived as the snobbish French hauteur used to put people in their place rather than merely seat them.
         Yet, a closer look at the history of such restaurants, and the thriving of haute cuisine restaurants that have replaced them, shows only that there were once more of them—many merely copycats of each other in décor and menu, with varying degrees of quality.
    More important, as with any industry, and especially the highly competitive restaurant business in New York, places like La Grenouille closed for all sorts of reasons that had nothing to do with falling out of favor.
        The historic fact is that most of the old-line French palaces closed for the same reasons many businesses do: Le Pavillon, which came out of the 1939 New York’s World’s Fair, reigned for decades before its owner, Henri Soulé (left), died and his successor failed to carry on; The deaths of paterfamilias of Le Veau d’Or, Le Cirque and Le Périgord robbed regulars of the cosseting they’d come to cherish. Lutèce, whose chef André Soltner owned the restaurant’s townhouse,  simply retired at the age of 72; so, too, did the owners of La Côte Basque and La Petite Marmite. The owners of La Caravelle lost their lease after the landlord tried to hike the rent exorbitantly.
         Yet, French haute cuisine in stunning, newer restaurants thrives in New York. Getting a table at Restaurant Daniel, whose owner Daniel Boulud opened a new version of Le Pavillon in 2022, is as tough as ever, just as it is at Jean-Georges, Le CouCou, Essential by Christophe and L’Abeille. Meanwhile, the French seafood restaurant Le Bernardin is at the top of every list as one of the best restaurants in the world. Even if not French by name, haute cuisine restaurants like Per Se are booked weeks in advance.
         Numerous other very high-end luxury restaurants are also packed every night whose chefs were trained in French kitchens, like the vegetarian Eleven Madison Park, Blue Hill, The Modern, Gotham and Gramercy Tavern, which all serve the kinds of dishes that have always been part of the French repertoire.
       
     Add to those the somewhat less expensive, more casual restaurants like Daniel Boulud’s Le Gigot, Boulud Sud and Café Boulud, Alain Ducasse’s Benoit, the trendy bistros Frenchette and Pastis, the long-running La Goulue, the Japanese-inflected 15 East Tocqueville, old standbys like Café Luxembourg and Chez Napoleon  and the impossible to get into Balthazar (left), and you’ll find French food of every stripe all over town, from SoHo to the Upper West Side and Brooklyn.
         The expansiveness and diversity of all kinds of restaurants in New York has never been more astounding, especially in light of the Covid epidemic. Fact is, despite Covid, economic boom and bust, and supposed cutbacks in expense allowances, New York has for decades always had between 22,000 and 25,000 eating establishments in all the boroughs. Fortunately, you don’t have to look very hard among them for a French restaurant, and chances are it will be as good or even better than La Grenouille ever was.

         If you asked just about any New Yorker over the age of fifty their earliest recollection of a wonderful Greek restaurant in Manhattan, it’s highly likely they’d say Periyali, because for so many years, since 1987, it was the pre-eminent Greek restaurant in the city, with a winsome taverna-like décor evoking the Ionian isles and a menu of classic, homey dishes others would come to imitate.
         Periyali was not the first Greek restaurant in New York,  or even the first in Manhattan, for those who may recall Piraeus My Love, Mykonos and the Pantheon. But, when Nicola Kotsoni and Steve Tzolis Periyali, with consulting chefs Irene and Victor Gouras, opened on West 29th Street, Periyali defined the Greek genre and menu for years to come. Not least is its extensive list of Greek wines, which has grown significantly in number and quality.
        
     Periyali maintained a very regular clientele over the years and consistent reputation for quality and service. Closed during Covid, it has been re-opened by Kotsoni and Tzolis, carefully refreshed and brightened, its muslin drapes on the ceilings still billowing, its sturdy white wooden chairs and red roses on the tablecloths, still one of the loveliest dining rooms in Manhattan.
         The menu, originally based on the Gourases’ restaurant on Patmos, hasn’t changed post-pandemic, on the belief that people will want to eat those comfort foods they had so long enjoyed, including the platter of five mezzes ($30) like creamy fish roe spread (cod or mullet) taramosalata (à la carte $14); the smoky charred eggplant and garlicky melitzanosalata ($14); tzatziki yogurt flavored with dill and cucumber ($14); yellow split peas and red onions called kremidaki ($14); and marinated lima beans with herbs and garlic called gigandas skordalia ($16). These all come with warm whole wheat pita bread, which is unusual and not as pliant as white wheat pitas.
         Appetizers are larger portions than the mezzes, and the oktapodi sharas is terrific: tender, grilled and olive oil-dressed octopus tentacles that have been marinated in red wine ($28). Calamarakia tiganita ($21) are flavorful calamari served with skordalia garlic condiment. The delightful, light spanakopita ($19) is a good item to share, a phyllo tart stuffed with spinach and cheese with crispy zucchini fritters kolokithokeftedes.
       I do wish that Periyali served a wider variety of Mediterranean fish, rather than just branzino and salmon (although there is a “fish of the day”), for it is from the sea that Greek food culture flourishes. But the branzino from the Canary Islands is expertly cooked and dressed with olive oil and lemon, and grilled tiger shrimp garides psites ($41) is a hefty dish served with spinach and rice.
        Lamb is the basis for Greek non-seafood cookery, and arni Youvetsi ($41), often served as a Sunday lunch in Greece, is a generous, succulent braised lamb shank with tomato, orzo, and Eastern spices. Kouneli stifado (a pricey $51) was similar as a braised dish, tough the rabbit hadn’t much flavor of itself. Of course, you must have moussaka at a Greek restaurant, made with layers of ground meat and sweet eggplant lavished with a creamy béchamel ($31). My favorite greens are braised horta, which means wild greens, ($14).
        Desserts ($14) keep within the Greek repertoire, including an orange cake called ortokalopita soaked in orange-scented syrup; karidopita, rich with walnuts and perfumedwith cinnamon; and baklava pastry. Best of all are the buttery, crunchy, sugar-dusted almond cookies called kourabiedes. And do end off with thick Greek coffee. Medium sweet.
       
 It’s not just good to see Periyali back up and running, fresher than ever, but that regulars are coming back and newcomers in that neck of the Manhattan woods are just discovering why it was exemplary from the start.

Open for dinner nightly; lunch Mon.-Fri. (including a two-course $39 prix fixe lunch as well as à la carte)