David Bouley, an award-winning chef who was part of a culinary vanguard in the 1980s that created the New American style and turned fine dining into an expressive art form, died Feb. 12 at his home in Kent, Conn. He was 70.
The cause was a heart attack, said his literary agent, Lisa Queen.
Mr. Bouley followed his muse, willing to change a menu on the fly, close a restaurant on a whim and experiment with sous-vide cooking or Japanese kaiseki.
He began cooking traditional French rustic dishes such as braised rabbits and later in life stressed naturopathy with nutrient-dense dishes. Profiling him in the New York Times, food writer Jeff Gordinier lauded him for “his hungry mind and insatiable appetite for change, motion and new information.”
His dishes included serving raw yellowfin tuna on a ring-molded mound of baby fennel, nestled in an emulsion decorated with dozens of dots of various herb oils. He served pineapple and artichokes with skate and added peppermint to lobster consommé. One of his signature dishes was a mushroom flan with cru Beaujolais.
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“Intellectual cooking is a blast, but what people want without thinking comes from the physical sensation of flavor,” Mr. Bouley told Wine Spectator in 2012.
David Bouley was born in Storrs, Conn., on May 27, 1953, with dual French and American citizenship, and trained in kitchens in Cape Cod, Mass., and Santa Fe, N.M., as well as France and Switzerland.
After studying at the Sorbonne, he worked for such chefs as Roger Vergé, Paul Bocuse, Joël Robuchon, Gaston Lenôtre and Frédy Girardet. He learned his craft in the kitchens of Le Cirque, Le Périgord and La Côte Basque.
Share this articleShareMr. Bouley spent much of his career cooking in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan, starting with Montrachet when it opened in 1985 — earning three stars from the Times — and then his own restaurant, Bouley, two years later.
Other restaurants he worked in included Danube, Bouley Bakery, Upstairs at Bouley, Bouley at Home, Secession and Brushstroke, a collaborative effort with the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Osaka, Japan. Danube and Bouley Bakery each earned two Michelin stars. Brushstroke earned a Michelin star in its first year and landed on GQ’s list of the 10 best restaurants in America.
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The restaurant Bouley — which memorably had a foyer filled with apples — closed in 2017 after 30 years and several location changes, earning three stars from the Times the year previous. The critic highlighted what he called the most dramatic dish, a Malibu sea urchin in its spiky shell, filled with tofu, soy, vinegar, yuzu jelly, salmon trout roe, sea urchin and yuzu sorbet.
Bouley Bakery became a base of operations for relief right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in cooperation with the Red Cross, and more than 1 million meals were prepared and served at Ground Zero, although there were allegations some money was misappropriated.
Mr. Bouley trained a new generation of chefs, including Dan Barber, Eric Ripert, Christina Tosi, César Ramirez, Amy Scherber, Alex Ureña, Anita Lo, Galen Zamarra, Kurt Gutenbrunner, Brian Bistrong and Bill Yosses. He also sold a line of chairs, tables and mirrors.
Survivors include his wife, Nicole Bartelme.
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