New Yorkers are understandably filled with dread when a beloved institution is reimagined. The improvement is usually short-lived, if at all, and the next thing you know the Oak Room or Bill’s Gay Nineties is wiped from the map. We’re cut off from what we loved about the good old days of the city. Manhattan, alas, is indifferent to nostalgia.
But every now and then, change is welcome. Le Veau d’Or, the Upper East Side French bistro, reopened last week after a renovation that took five years, thanks to the coronavirus. And it’s a triumphant return, complete with exceptional duck magret and gigot of lamb, and, for the more committed, tripe and tête de veau. The bar still has six seats, and the black-and-red floor has been buffed so that it gleams with all its former romance.
