Photo by Michael Harlan Turkell for Resy

Nine Hours at Restaurant Daniel: À la Presse

By Michael Harlan Turkell, a Brooklyn-based food photographer, writer, and cookbook author. He most recently hosted the Modernist Pizza Podcast, and continues to explore the art, history, and science of many foodways.

Published: Sept. 3, 2025

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like behind the scenes of a restaurant, this is for you. In Behind the Line, photojournalists take you inside the kitchen for a unique perspective on everything that goes into a single day of service, and the people who make it all happen.

In this edition, we get a glimpse into a day at New York’s Restaurant Daniel, the two-Michelin-starred restaurant from chef Daniel Boulud, from photographer and journalist Michael Harlan Turkell.

There’s a lot at stake naming a restaurant after yourself. But when you see chef Daniel Boulud at his namesake restaurant, you can see that he’s a man who doesn’t just put his name on things — he’s willing to bet his Lyonnaise legacy on the line to show New York City what French food is at its finest.

Boulud has been cooking in New York City since 1982, first earning recognition as the executive chef of Le Cirque in the late ’80s, before opening Daniel on East 65th Street in 1993. He has since built an empire, with a number of critically acclaimed restaurants in the city, including Café Boulud at Maison Barnes, La Tête d’Or by Daniel, Le Pavillon, and countless others around the world. Michelin-starred Daniel has, and always will be, however, the crown jewel.

What’s most impressive is that, even at 70 years of age, Boulud is still in the restaurant pretty much every day — it helps that he lives upstairs — cruising around the dining room during service for his requisite table touches. Diners love to recant their Daniel stories straight to Boulud himself, and he always takes the time to listen. This restaurant is his life, and his warmth and humor comes through in each conversation.

Spending a day with Boulud and his team, many of whom have been with him for more than two decades, was a study in old-school fine-dining traditions, but also nods to the present and future of it. There are no shortcuts there — and there’s so much grit. Everything takes time and dedication.

Photo by Michael Harlan Turkelly for Resy

11:47 a.m.

Eddy Leroux, Daniel’s executive chef for almost five years, and its chef de cuisine for more than 20 years prior, has recently started scribbling on his iPad rather than in his little black notebooks to digitize his recipes, while still maintaining a handwritten, hand-drawn touch. That move to modernity, while still holding onto the past, feels very parallel to Daniel as a whole.

A high percentage of the kitchen staff still speaks French, whether you find yourself in the labyrinth-like prep kitchen downstairs or among the towering toques upstairs on the pass. There’s still a clear brigade system here, the hierarchical structure of cooks developed by Escoffier, and it shows in the kitchen’s polish and prowess.

Photo by Michael Harlan Turkell for Resy

12:19 p.m.

I watch chef de cuisine Clément Le Jamtel debone dozens of ducks for Daniel’s signature dish: duck à la presse. The birds are raised specifically for the restaurant by Joe Jurgielewicz & Son, a fourth-generation family farm in Pennsylvania. These Pekin ducks, of which Daniel only uses female birds weighing approximately nine pounds each, are marinated in a mixture of port wine, red wine, spices, red currant jelly, and citrus peels, which perfume the duck for one week, before being roasted for exactly 21 minutes in total during service, in short bursts, with intermittent resting periods, to best retain their tender juiciness. The dish must be ordered at least 24 hours in advance.

4:05 p.m.

I follow Boulud out of the kitchen as he sneaks down the hallway and around the corner into the nondescript door leading into the wine cellar. There, he shows me some of his large-format wine bottles, curated, and cleaned up by Erin Healy, head sommelier.

4:07 p.m.

A sign of Boulud’s status as a celebrity chef: He has bestowed his likeness on many projects, including limited-edition bottles of bourbon and whiskey.

4:28 p.m.

As Boulud tells me right before his first bite, one of his many joys within the world of food is cheese. Pascal Vittu, Daniel’s head fromager for more than 20 years, wheels a selection of French and American farmstead cheeses around the dining room, giving us a taste of a recent highlight: Julianna, an herbes de Provence and flower petal perfumed goat cheese from Capriole in Indiana.

4:40 p.m.

There’s a “secret” catbird seat in the kitchen, dubbed “The Skybox,” which overlooks the pass, and doubles as an office for Boulud. I sneak in a meeting with his assistants Victoria Kuhn and Jessica Schwartz, before they convert the space into an intimate private dining room that night. The walls are covered with framed photographs of celebrities and athletes (Boulud also has a signed shoe from NBA star Shaquille O’Neal), and past presidents.

4:42 p.m.

In the center of the Adam Tihany-designed main dining room, I listen to general manager Brian Willoughby lead pre-service announcements, calling out table touches for diners — from first timers to old timers — reminding the front of the house that all guests ought to be considered and welcomed as VIPs.

4:51 p.m.

I’m enamored by the very New York City-centric plateware from Manufacture de Longchamp, handmade for the restaurant by Philippe Orliac in France in Longchamp, in the heart of Burgundy. It’s inspired by the Japanese art of kintsugi, in which cracked porcelain is bound with gold. An iconic drawing of the Statue of Liberty in blue is one of many historic cityscapes found on these plates; others include the Flatiron Building and the Brooklyn Bridge.

4:55 p.m.

A glossy series of stocks — duck à la presse, lamb, beef, squab — line the meat entremets (course) station. I’m always in awe of all the laborious work that goes into cooking and clarifying each stock, which takes hours if not days. They’ll eventually be the building blocks for finished sauces.

5:16 p.m.

Just before service, Boulud pops back into the kitchen to taste dishes-in-the-works and conduct quality control. Boulud tastes the components of each dish separately at first, then the fully composed, finished dish, with Leroux and sous chef George Watson.

5:24 p.m.

Boulud and I catch our breath outside the restaurant on East 65th Street, flanked between placards denoting the restaurant’s status among Relais & Châteaux and Les Grandes Tables Du Monde.

5:29 p.m.

Always cordial to everyone in the neighborhood, Boulud waves to passersby outside the restaurant.

Photo by Micahel Harlan Turkell for Resy

5:57 p.m.

Finally, I witness a duck à la presse get a final rest before it’s plated and paraded into the dining room, where it will be carved tableside for a lucky few. It’s probably the most dedicated and defining dish on the menu, based on a 19th-century recipe popularized by La Tour d’Argent, arguably Paris’s most storied restaurant. The whole duck is marinated for a week before being rarely roasted, presented, and carved tableside. Meanwhile, the carcass and innards are inserted into a press, similar to what you’d see in wine, to further extract all the flavor from the bones to the blood, fortifying the resulting sauce that lacquers the duck meat.

6:01 p.m.

Smoke fills the air as Leroux uses a smoking gun to inject a final layer of flavor to a delicately cooked fish dish, capturing the fumes under a cloche, to be dramatically unveiled tableside.

6:09 p.m.

The fully cooked duck sits on a wooden duck decoy, waiting in the wings of the dining room.

6:15 p.m.

I’m told that captains carve the duck almost competitively, vying to see who can get a cleaner trim on the bird, in a quicker amount of time. Breasts and thighs are placed in a copper pan and brought back to the kitchen where they’re thinly sliced and plated before returning to the table for the final addition: a rich, dark, wine-infused sauce Rouennaise.

6:27 p.m.

It’s quite a scene to see the duck’s carcass and select innards (e.g. hearts, lungs) placed in a silver-plated medieval-looking device that’s meant to “press” all the flavor from bones to blood out of the bird, in a similar vein to a wine press. Maître d’ Christopher Humberson (left) and kitchen server Gerardo Torres start the process.

6:31 p.m.

Operating the duck press is a two-person job.

6:37 p.m.

Sauce Rouennaise is finally poured over the duck. The sauce is rich and decadently glosses each thinly sliced piece of breast meat.

7:29 p.m.

Executive pastry chef Shaun Velez anchors every meal with dessert. I’m struck by how all of the desserts get their finishing touches in a tiny nook of the kitchen, no bigger than 100 square feet, which often has three or four people plating at the same time. Aside from many mignardises, Velez has a riff on strawberry shortcake called Oishi Strawberry, with pine needle crème légère on a strawberry confiture caramelized arlette (flat crispy biscuit). There’s also a chocolate île flottante.

7:56 p.m.

There’s such a briny, beautiful smell that comes off kataifi-crusted Maine sea scallops when they get seared. They’ll be paired with early morels, tender Napa cabbage, and stonevine, all brought together with a zesty green peppercorn-vermouth sauce.

8:01 p.m.

In the throngs of service, a waiter stops for me to present a binchotan-charred Scharbauer Ranch wagyu striploin in the foreground, before disappearing through swinging doors that lead to the main dining room. Broccoli di Ciccio, “pommes Parisiennes,” ramps-stuffed shallot, and a chimichurri-Bordelaise sauce complete the list of accoutrements.

8:02 p.m.

A few hours into service, chef de cuisine Clément Le Jamtel takes his turn at the head of the pass, opposite the expo station, as there’s an odd little lull to service. Jamtel has been with the restaurant for more than a decade.

8:10 p.m.

Order, fired! Jus d’agneau (lamb jus) fills a plate, creating the base notes for a Colorado stuffed lamb saddle set. Black garlic, asiago, green asparagus, and pickled kumquat create a vibrant palette. While there still are the instances of the occasional truffle and caviar, the flashy adornments at Daniel aren’t just the known luxuries.

8:13 p.m.

Leroux at the pass.

8:37 p.m.

Leroux, along with assistant general manager Ashley Sinon, carefully watches a closed-circuit video screen of the dining room in coordination with tickets on the expo board, for a seamless service.