Daniel Bouluds Le Pavillon celebrates 5th anniversary and deserves credit for saving NYC dining from pandemic

The restaurant that saved Midtown dining from the pandemic just celebrated its fifth anniversary — and chef/owner Daniel Boulud can take credit for more than Le Pavillon’s widely praised, Michelin-star menu and spectacular setting.When New York City dining rooms were still limited to less than half indoor capacity in the uncertain spring of 2021, Boulud and Sebastien Silvestri, CEO of the chef’s Dinex Group, went to then-Gov.Andrew Cuomo and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio with a warning:“We won’t open Le Pavillon until they guarantee that capacity limits would be lifted entirely,” Boulud related. It prodded the pols — who were eager to tout One Vanderbilt, the restaurant’s skyscraper home next to Grand Central Terminal, as a symbol of resilience — to restore full seating after economically unsustainable 25%- and 35%-capacity rules.When Boulud and his partners at landlord SL Green opened the doors in April 2021, office buildings were 80% empty. “Le Pavillon signifies a moment in 2021 when there were a lot of question marks about the future of midtown,” SL Green CEO Marc Holliday told The Post this week.

“We opened in the throat of the crisis.Everyone wondered how a restaurant of this  quality would fare.”Manhattan had permanently lost the fabled 21 Club, Esca, Hakkasan, the original Jing Fong in Chinatown and Boulud’s own DB Bistro.

Many more establishments wouldn’t open until a year later — Barbetta, Monkey Bar, the Polo Bar and Sardi’s.Holliday said that although One Vanderbilt was 60% leased when Le Pavillon opened, “It was still very lightly occupied.While people were confident in the future, they hadn’t yet come back to their offices.”There were additional challenges.

In a year when even affluent New Yorkers feared for their futures, the three-course prix-fixe menu started at $125 per head.(It has since risen to $145.)Although my review praised Boulud’s “most creative menu in years,” dishes were less familiar  th...