RESTAURANT REVIEW: Le Même Veau

The Frenchette crew has taken over the 87-year-old restaurant, and the snails are as garlicky and the duck as pink as ever.

- MATTHEW SCHNEIER

Since 1937, Le Veau d’Or has sat squat and immobile on East 60th Street across from Bloomingdale’s, whose perfume spritzers might well have begun their spritzing primarily to combat the waft of garlic. Le Veau d’Or—“the Golden Calf,” at 87 surely the world’s oldest—has always been a testament to Frenchness served froggy, even before the sizzling cocotte of legs arrives at your table. In its mid-century heyday, it served the French country cuisine that was still the mark of nonpareil sophistication to the city’s grandees; the old Le Veau was the sort of place where "Dave" Selznick would be spotted by The Daily News dining with Jennifer Jones, for whom he had recently left Irene Mayer.

New trends supplanted the dominance of French cuisine, but Le Veau d'Or soldiered on, impervious. While the restaurant cycled through owners-most recently, Catherine Treboux, who took over from her father, Robert-they all upheld its traditions and menu. Its latest stewards, the neo-bistro specialists Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson of Frenchette and Le Rock, seem committed to doing the same. "My grandma used to go there!" cried one of my dinner guests when I extended an invitation. She accepted with a warning: "If this painting isn't hanging in there," she said, texting a photo of a sleeping calf nestled under bedcovers, "I'm leaving."