Restaurant Review: At Eulalie, a Warm Welcome Is a Phone Call Away

In 2014, when I had my first meal at the Simone, you could have described it as slightly behind the times.

The pace was languid. The menus were handwritten. The chef, Chip Smith, molded regional American flavors over a frame of French technique. The dining room, on the ground floor of an Upper East Side townhouse, was about as loud as an Alpine forest during a light snowfall. Online, the Simone made almost no noise at all. You really had to search for its website, and it wasn’t listed on any of the reservation sites.

If you wanted to book a table, you had to pick up the phone and call Tina Vaughn, who owned the restaurant with Chip, her partner in life and business. She would write your name in a hardcover appointment book. The couple were still running the Simone this way when they closed it, in 2022, after failing to work out a renewed lease. And this is how they operate Eulalie, which they opened in TriBeCa in October.

A decade ago, refusing to take online reservations put them in a distinct minority. Today it makes them seem like members of an isolated religious sect.

It’s hard to remember now, but not long ago, smart restaurants saw the reservation phone call as a chance to make you feel welcome even if your meal was still a month away. The conversation was the start of something — if you were lucky, something nice.