Jacques Ouari, the owner and chef of La Cave des Fondus, drinking wine from baby bottle. (Mayrilyn K. Yee/The New York Times)Some restaurant blogs have noted the impending birth of La Cave des Fondus, scheduled to open tomorrow in an underground crib at Prince and Elizabeth Streets. As far as I can tell, though, nobody seems to have reported on its pioneering notion of beverage service.
Wine and beer will be offered to customers in baby bottles.
While drinking alcohol in a container otherwise used for Similac may be a novelty in New York (at least in public), it has already been tried in that world capital of gastronomic sophistication, Paris. Paris, France.
La Cave des Fondus is a faithful homage to the Montmartre restaurant Le Refuge des Fondus, where Parisians enthusiastically suck down the house red and white.
Jacques Ouari, who owns the Manhattan restaurant but not the one in Paris, said, “I wanted to set up my place exactly like the one in Paris. It’s such a fun place. Everybody loves drinking beer and wine from baby bottles – even my father thought it was fun – and I think New Yorkers will like it too. I checked with the health department and as long as we put the bottles in the dishwasher they have no problem with it.”
Everybody got that? If you want to act like an infant and get drunk at the same time, City Hall is giving you a big green light.
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