At a Deluxe Dining Room on the 100th Floor, a Chef Toils in Obscurity
The New York Times
In New York, private restaurants in luxury towers are a popular amenity. The public cannot eat there, and residents only drop in occasionally.
As the chef at 10 Cubed in New York City, Nduvo Salaam prepares dishes that blend his African-Caribbean roots with classic French technique on the 100th floor of Central Park Tower — one of the tallest residential buildings in the world.
But it can be lonely at the top.
The restaurant, 1,000 feet in the air and overlooking Central Park, is among about a dozen in the city open only to residents of luxury apartment buildings and their guests, a globally elite clientele that many chefs would be thrilled to serve.
But traffic at Mr. Salaam’s restaurant is sometimes slow. And while he toils in relative splendor with views that look down on passing helicopters and other skyscrapers, his work can feel anonymous. After all, this is the age of celebrity chefs on TV and Instagrammable dishes that create long lines outside restaurants. Even some private chefs who work in home kitchens have developed big followings on social media.
“You have public restaurants, and those chefs everyone knows. And then private chefs — they’re starting to make their way out,” said Mr. Salaam, seated at a table in his own restaurant where he sank a spoon into one of his signature dishes: a small square of fluffy honeynut pumpkin custard with sweet garlic, Ossetra gold caviar and a subtle red curry topped with a delicate, latticelike coriander cracker, for $38.
“I’m in this hidden bubble,” he said.
