If you wanted to pretend the pandemic never happened, that you never had to lay off your workforce, that you weren’t freaked out about incurring millions of dollars in debt, that all lives were equitable, that art and storytelling and innovation no longer matter, that celebrating ostentatious wealth and lavishness is a great idea, that a personal touch and vision are foolish idealism, then Le Select, the luxe, French-skewing restaurant from Boka group, is perfect.
Maybe this is why the restaurant feels like dining in a football-stadium-sized subway terminal designed by Galileo. If you were worried about making up for a couple years of lost revenue, you’d open an impersonal hangar-sized room like this to capture the money.
While the velvet and brass finishes at Le Select are opulent, the glinting subway tile, the giant faux skylight, the mirrored windowless walls channel a kind of survivalist opulence, as if this is an underground quonset-hut-shaped bunker where the ultra-wealthy have barricaded themselves away from the dirty plebes tearing each other apart in the HBO Series The Last of Us.
I do like the globe chandeliers which channel a monochrome version of a solar system model, but the asymmetric globe thing is also kind of overplayed. Le Select’s lighting channels the chandeliers from the now defunct reincarnation of The Pump Room. In the words of the popular US Weekly feature, the Pump Room which deployed textures and shade differences in their globe lights wore the look way better.
It’s undeniable that lots of money was spent in the buildout and that there was a conscious effort towards clean and simple. But that’s also why I’m frustrated. The execution of simple requires extraordinary attention to detail. I’m having a hard time with a large brass stemware storage trellis in the middle of the dining room.
It feels like one of those hipster Dwell magazine spreads where an architect installs cabinetry with no doors thus exposing all the kitchen implements. The architect calls it edgy and innovative, but the reality is the underfunded architect wanting to splurge in other design areas tried to save money by not investing in privacy for the serveware.
I say to my wife, “Aren’t they worried some drunken customer is going to run into that and shatter all their wine glasses?”
She responds, “C’mon, how drunk would you have to be?”
Stay tuned dear reader.