22 11.8.20
Before the pandemic hit, Prune was in
the midst of a yearlong series of celebra-
tory lunches to mark our turning 20. Each
lunch featured a guest chef who’d had a
strong infl uence on my cooking career,
and though all the lunches were wildly
diff erent, each had its special excitement.
There was an elegant, erudite lunch with
Mimi Sheraton, at which we served the
stuff ed cabbage and dried-fruit compote
from her Eastern European Jewish reper-
toire. There was an avant-garde one with
Elizabeth Falkner, who served platters of
spicy Sichuan rabbit heads complete with
instructions on how to crack the skulls. And
there was the one we cooked with Marc
Vetri, my brother-from-another-mother,
who drove in from Philly with fl our he had
milled himself from local wheat to make his
chicken-liver pasta for us.While we never got the chance to fi n-
ish the series before we were forced to
shutter, we were lucky to have held our
last one in February with the legendary
André Soltner, chef of Lutèce, the New
York restaurant that defi ned the classic
elegance of French cooking here in the
United States for decades. Soltner is 87,
and he retired and sold Lutèce years
before I opened Prune in 1999. But it’sThe Lutèce
onion tart.Photograph by Heami LeeWhat I Learned From a Legend: André Soltner
made this onion tart for 34 years at Lutèce, and
it’s still perfect.
Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Rebecca Bartoshesky.Eat By Gabrielle Hamilton