JULY 2020 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 59
MAIN DISH
CHEF BRIAN LEE
A SIMMERING BOUNCE BACK
BY TIMOTHY BOLGER
Days before the Garden City Hotel
would normally host its fancy-hatted
annual Belmont Stakes festival in June,
guests were instead toasting with to-go
cups, celebrating the first week of outdoor
dining’s return.
Although the hotel didn’t close during
the coronavirus pandemic — traveling
nurses and other essential workers
stayed there during the peak — its
restaurants, King Bar and Red Salt
Room, conceptualized by celebrity
Chef David Burke, remain temporarily
closed as of press time, with catered
events canceled. In place of the usual
fine dining fare, Executive Chef Brian
Lee has been cooking up inventive new
family friendly casual menus for guests
dining al fresco at the Patio Bar on the
hotel’s spacious lawn.
“We brought the menu comfortably
affordable, compared to our normal
Garden City standard,” Lee says while
presiding over dinner among the grass
and trees. “We’re going to interest our
locals by catching eyes with a great
price and giving it back to the locals
who’ve been a fan of our hotel.”
Patrons appeared thirsty to try the
new menu, judging by brisk business
at the Patio Bar during a recent visit on
a weekday evening — with tables 6 feet
apart to ensure social distancing and
mask rules in effect, of course.
The hotel has also been open for takeout,
curbside pickup, and to-go kits that
take advantage of its top-notch inventory.
There’s the Steakhouse Burgers Kit
featuring the popular short rib burgers
and all the sides, the Pizzaiola Kit with
ingredients for the best homemade
pizza ever to grace an oven, and the
Curbside Butcher Kit that includes a
choice of dry-aged steaks, chicken, or
kielbasa.
To protect those staying at the hotel,
the staff submits to daily temperature
checks, requires guests to wear PPE,
and management has rolled out the fivephase
Rest Easy measure to put worried
minds at ease. In addition to cleaning
all rooms, housekeepers also disinfect
high-touch points, sanitize rooms with
a ULV ultra-low volume atomization
fogging machine, use virus-eliminating
UV light disinfection application, then
seal the room, following a management
inspection.
It’s a lot of work, but nothing that can’t
be handled by a hotel that’s been around
for 146 years, survived two world
wars and multiple pandemics, and was
founded when Ulysses S. Grant was
president.
Chef Lee, who’s been working hotel
kitchens for 15 years — most recently
at Trump SoHo before
coming to Garden City — has
been the talent that sustains
the kitchen during the crisis.
“Brian has put in a lot of long
hours here,” says Carole Diaz,
director of sales and marketing
for the hotel. “He’s normally
running a restaurant, a
bar, and our entire banquets …
All of a sudden, the hotel is lower
occupancy, we have to figure out
how we can still feed our guests and
be creative with only very few
people.”
Creative he has
been, having
tried four
m e n u s
since the
pandemic
hit and
a l r e a d y
worki n g
on a fifth. A
recent visit
r e v e a l e d
the scrumptiousness
of
Lee’s chicken
dumpling soup
($10), a divine
rigatoni pomodoro
with shrimp ($20),
and a ginger pepper
salmon ($20) grilled
to perfection with
sides of forbidden
black rice, broccoli
rabe, caper berries,
and cherry tomatoes.
Of course, no trip to Garden City Hotel
“True leaders, when the time is tough, actually
find an opportunity to give back to the guests,”
is complete without a sample of the
famed Burke bacon, a thickcut
maple-glazed
strip of sowbelly
prepared with
a chef’s torch.
A staple at
all of Burke’s
r e s t a u -
rants, it’s
norma l l y
served on a
clothesline.
But Chef
Lee fired it
up a notch,
taking the
chocolate-covered version of Burke
bacon and adding a shaved almond and
crushed pretzel crust. The result is as
ridiculously delicious as it sounds.
The match baked in heaven stems from
Chefs Lee and Burke, who both live in
Fort Lee, New Jersey, sharing a flare for
culinary precision.
“As crazy or as great as something is,
you have to have a reason for it,” Burke
previously told the Press. “And there
has to be some fundamental foundation
or groundwork from a regional
perspective, seasonal perspective, or
digestive perspective. You can’t just
pull things out of midair.”
But what’s also fundamental in the
current climate is rebuilding relationships
with the regulars, which is
what the new, more affordable
menu is all about.
“True leaders, when the
time is tough, actually
find an opportunity
to give back to the
guests,” Lee says,
“instead of trying
to scrape
them for another
penny.”
The Garden City
Hotel is located
at 45 Seventh St.,
Garden City. It
can be reached at
gardencityhotel.com
or 877-549-0400.
Executive Chef Brian
Lee oversees all food
and catering at the
Garden City Hotel.
says Chef Brian Lee.
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