Jean-Georges restaurant at the Four Seasons has a new chef and a new menu
The new chef at the Four Seasons comes from the Daniel Boulud orbit, and the revived a la carte menu is designed to be “more approachable to the everyday person."
Jean-Georges at the Four Seasons, led by celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten from a dazzling setting on the 59th floor of the Comcast Technology Center, has a new chef de cuisine: Colin Henderson, 34, an acolyte of the multi-Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud.
Henderson is a native Canadian (British Columbia-born, educated in Ottawa) whose U.S. experience includes not only Boulud’s flagship Daniel in New York but a stint working with chef Michael Tusk at Quince, a three-Michelin-star restaurant in San Francisco. During his nine years with Ottawa’s Beckta Group, he learned the farm-to-table way. “You don’t even order the produce,” he said. “The produce arrives — bags and bushels of product — and you make your menu off of what they give you.”
The luxe Jean-Georges has also revived its more approachable à la carte menu to supplement the six-course tastings that place it among the priciest offerings in the city.
Jean-Georges opened in summer 2019 with both a tasting menu and à la carte service but was closed seven months later by the pandemic. It reopened in March 2022 with only the six-course option, priced between $198 and $218.
SkyHigh, the lounge formerly known as JG SkyHigh, still serves from breakfast through late night off the Four Seasons’ lobby on the 60th floor.
The à la carte menu, which was re-instituted recently, includes dishes like mozzarella ravioli with black truffle fondue, peekytoe crab dumplings with Meyer lemon, and celeriac tea for appetizers. Entrees, priced at $45 to $68, include bacon-wrapped venison loin with poached pear and red wine syrup; sautéed Hudson Valley foie gras with heirloom greens, winter mushroom, and marcona almond; and seared wagyu beef tenderloin with black truffle, crispy potato, and caramelized onion jus.
The prospect of working with Vongerichten “really excited me,” said Henderson, now in New York to immerse himself with the Jean-Georges team before starting in Philadelphia in April. “Jean-Georges has a great style — classic French with Asian flavors — which is kind of cool and exciting.” He said Boulud, also a French-born chef with exacting standards, had “a lot of similarities” with Vongerichten’s food.
The menu will be Jean-Georges’, “100%,” Henderson said. “It’s my job to make sure all the flavors are properly seasoned and that we’re executing it properly. He is known for his recipes being exact and to the point. If you miss one or two steps on that, it really drastically affects it.”
For now, Jean-Georges will continue with dinner Wednesday to Saturday but in time will expand to seven nights a week.
Henderson has been to Philadelphia to check out the kitchen and came away with an observation: His “go-to” food when he’s out of work is a beef dip — aka, the French dip — “and you guys have a cheesesteak. It’s sort of like a French dip: beautifully shaved roast beef on a nice, fresh baguette. Nothing better than that.”
“Beautifully shaved roast beef”? It’s OK. He’ll learn.