L’Avenue

The chic eatery inside New York's Saks Fifth Avenue flagship

by Patrick Janelle

It was a frosty Tuesday evening in late February 2019 when I emerged from the art-deco lobby of the Rockefeller Center on 5th Avenue. I crossed the street towards Saks Fifth Avenue, heading to a side entrance that faces St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Along with my boyfriend, I was en route to dinner at L’Avenue, the iconic department store’s restaurant which had opened several weeks earlier.

Once inside, we took a dedicated restaurant elevator—whisking us upwards, past floors of perfume counters, expensive handbags, and delicate garments—to the 9th floor. We wound our way through a maze-like series of hallways lined with floor-to-ceiling curtains, past an ornate stained-glass wall, to the restaurant beyond. The dining room, with low sofas and banquettes in calming beige tones, is framed by arched windows overlooking the Rockefeller Center. The sprawling layout is punctuated with imposing glass boxes housing dioramas of accessories, jewelry, and objet.

L’Avenue, which is open for both lunch and dinner, is the second outpost of the celebrity-studded restaurant of the same name in Paris, which sits a stone’s throw from the Dior atelier on the Avenue Montaigne. The menu offers both French and Vietnamese staples, which means you can get chicken spring rolls as well as duck foie gras pâté (I recommend both), along with a well-executed cocktail. One floor lower, accessible via a grand staircase, sits The Chalet, a cozy bar with a more experimental cocktail program. Rustic, wooden rafters imported from Europe and plentiful woolen throws give the impression that the place was plucked right off the mountains of Aspen or Chamonix.

The new property, designed by Philippe Starck, feels at home here in Midtown: I imagine it will soon be crowded with both starlets and grand dames as it renews an old tradition of chic eateries inside flagship retail establishments.

Photos by Justin Bridges.