Gregory Gourdet shapes Printemps dining
- CBS highlighted Gregory Gourdet’s role shaping Printemps New York’s food program, where the James Beard-winning chef oversees dining inside One Wall Street. (cbsnews.com) - The key detail is scale: Gourdet is not running one restaurant but five concepts, including Maison Passerelle, Salon Vert, and the Red Room Bar. (us.printemps.com) - It matters because Printemps is using destination dining to define its first U.S. flagship — and Gourdet gives that strategy real culinary credibility. (us.printemps.com)
Luxury retail is the domain here, but the real hook is food. Printemps New York — the French department store’s first U.S. flagship at One Wall Street — didn’t just add(cbsnews.com)use stores like this now need reasons for people to linger, not just browse. The fresh news peg is a CBS segment that put Gourdet’s role back in foc(us.printemps.com)he project. (cbsnews.com) ### What is Gourdet act(us.printemps.com)means he is shaping five separate food-and-drink concepts across the store rather than simply helming a single kitchen. Printemps describes the lineup as a full day-to-night sequence — café, raw bar, champagne bar, cocktail lounge, and the flagship restaurant Maison Passerelle. (us.printemps.com) ### Why is five concepts a big deal? Because that turns dining into infrastructure, not an amenity. A single in-store restaurant can feel like an add-on. Five concepts means th(cbsnews.com)cially important at One Wall Street, where Printemps is trying to make a luxury retail space feel like a destination in Lower Manhattan, not just another place to shop. (us.printemps.com) ### What’s the flagship restaurant? Maison Passerelle is the anchor. Gourdet describes it through a French lens, but not a narrow Par(us.printemps.com)dients and flavors from the French diaspora, especially the Caribbean and Africa. The official site pitches it as a “bridge,” which is basically the whole idea — French fine dining, but reframed through Gourdet’s Haitian heritage and broader diasporic influences. (maisonpasserellenyc.com) ### Why does Gourdet fit this job? Because he brings both prestige and a point of view. He is a James Beard-winning chef with a strong nat(us.printemps.com) problem. The store wants to feel French, fashion-forward, and culturally current in New York. Gourdet gives it that, partly because his cooking does not treat French cuisine as sealed off from colonial and diasporic history. (aol.com) ### Is this just about restaurants? Not really. Turns out Printemps is also using food as programming. For its first anniversary in March, the store staged(maisonpasserellenyc.com)th Gourdet at the center. That kind of event blurs the line between restaurant service, retail theater, and cultural activation — which is exactly what luxury stores want when they are trying to pull people off their phones and into a building. (cititour.com) ### Why does location matter? Because this is happening in the Fin(aol.com) weekends. A chef-led dining program gives Printemps a way to speak to tourists, downtown residents, and expense-account diners at the same time. Gourdet’s New York roots help too — even though he built much of his restaurant fame in Portland, this project is his return to the city on a very visible stage. (aol.com) ### So what changed this week? The underlying strategy did not cha(cititour.com)ch. That matters because when a retailer puts a chef in that role, food stops being support. It becomes part of the brand. (cbsnews.com) ### Bottom line? Printemps is betting that luxury shopping works better when it feels like a full outing. Gourdet is the person making that believable — not with one buzzy dining room, but with an ecosystem people might visit even if they never buy a handbag. (us.printemps.com)
