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[title]When Chef Justin Bogle was appointed Executive Chef of sky-high restaurant Manhatta in 2022, he set out on a mission to create a menu showcasing “Modern New York” cuisine through the use of local ingredients, prepared simply and presented beautifully. Since then, his creative flavor pairings and precise execution have created a one-of-a-kind dining experience, 60 floors up.
Before coming to Manhatta, Bogle forged an impressive career in noteworthy kitchens across both New York and Philadelphia. He previously spent six years as the Chef de Cuisine at the Soho restaurant Le Coucou and also worked at Gilt in the New York Palace Hotel as Executive Chef.
Now, Bogle works to interpret the spirit of New York City through a contemporary menu influenced by French and Japanese techniques alongside unexpected innovations. We recently caught up with the chef to discuss his career so far, his personal approach to cooking and his go-to meal to make at home.
What influences did you draw on to craft Manhatta’s menu?
There's a heavy French and Japanese influence on the cuisine. But there’s also a deep pantry of fermentations and things that we're making in-house as far as vinegars and pickles and fermentations to kind of add little nuances to the food. We're not standing on a soap box and preaching to the world all the things that we're doing in the background here, we kind of just let the food speak for itself.
How do you see the restaurant’s relationship with New York?
We're trying to pull locally as far as ingredients are concerned—seafood all coming from the East Coast, produce coming from local farms, shopping at the market, using farms that are within a hundred miles of the restaurant. And we kind of like to let the city inspire us as far as our chefs are concerned—dining out and eating street food and things of that nature.
How has the culinary preparation at Manhatta been different from what you've done in the past?
If we go all the way back to 2008 when I took the Executive Chef position at Gilt, this was the heyday of “molecular gastronomy.” As much as we hate that term, it's an easy reference point. So the food was very modern—the sauce work was rooted in classic techniques and terrines and charcuterie and all that stuff was prepared as classic as possible. But gels and foams and liquid nitrogen were abundant. Then at Le Coucou, I had the ability to work with Daniel Rose and kind of jumped down this rabbit hole of classic French cuisine. I think that allowed me to dial in my own style a little more and realize what was truly important and how to focus on the food. At Manhatta, rather than doubling back, I’m continuing to dip into interesting flavor profiles, but with a more focused and refined approach to it.
How would you describe your personal approach to cooking?
My personal approach is going to be ingredient driven right out of the gate. We're going to find the best product possible, and we're going to find ways to get it to the plate in the most pure way possible while making sure that the technique is highlighted. That could be an extremely simple preparation of a crudo that has two simple sauces or something that has a sauce that's a four-day process. And there's a simplicity to the plating that looks very simple, but if you dive into the recipes you’ll see that that sauce is not just a plum sauce, it's a plum sauce with a house-made plum vinegar that we make, and then there's also jalapeno juice that we've juiced and fermented for five days, and more layers. That's kind of the goal—being able to layer the food in a way that maybe looks simplistic before you realize how much deeper it is, to build these layers of flavor and present it in the least complicated way possible.
Do you consider the jaw-dropping view at Manahatta when you’re crafting the menu?
I don't think it's necessarily something where we sit down and we're like: "Okay, when we're developing this dish, it needs to look like this.” But there's definitely a part of it that we want it to have an exciting color palette. We want it to not be muted and boring. You have the entire Manhattan skyline behind you while you're having dinner here. So to make sure that the food stands up to that show that's happening behind you at all times is maybe not something that we necessarily sit down and consider, but at the end of the day, you eat with your eyes first and we need to make sure that it's beautiful. So it definitely comes into play.
Do you have a favorite recipe to make for yourself at home right now?
I am the simplest person when it comes to cooking at home. It's the biggest steak possible and some roasted potatoes. It's what my kids love, and that's exactly what I cooked this weekend. I put the Eagles game on, I made a giant two-pound rib eye with some roasted potatoes and everybody was happy.
Do you have any tips for at-home chefs looking to improve their cooking?
For me, it's to get to the market for local ingredients. Get to Union Square Market, know the schedule, get familiar with the farmers and what their harvest looks like. Also, keep it simple. For me, cooking at home is: I want the least amount of pans as possible. I want the cleanup to be as simple as possible, and I want the food to be delicious. So, obviously sourcing quality ingredients is number one, and then just preparing them as simply as possible.
Do you have a dish you're particularly proud of on the menu right now?
Yes, there’s a foie gras chawanmushi on the menu. Chawanmushi is a steamed Japanese egg custard traditionally made with dashi and eggs. You blend eggs into dashi and then steam it and serve it with some soy sauce or whatever your garnish is. But we take a traditional dashi and we puree some raw foie gras into it with the eggs, and season it with a little Sauterne. Earlier, I mentioned pulling from Japanese and French influences, and this dish is kind of the perfect mashup of those cuisines for me. So it's the chawanmushi base, the dashi, the eggs, the foie gras and the Sauterne. That gets poured into a traditional vessel that gets steamed to order, and then we top it with a coffee ponzu. After that, we garnish it with some pickled shiitakes and cubes of foie gras that we kiss with charcoal from the grill. It's a very interesting combination,
Do you have any idea of where you might want to take Manhatta in the future?
I think we are an evolving restaurant. I think we're one year in and we're kind of figuring out the things that worked in the first year and the things that didn't work and we have goals and aspirations that we talk about every day. I think constant improvement and constant evolution is what's going to make us successful. We opened last September a la carte. Then we rolled out the five-course tasting menu in the dining room right after New Year's Eve, and then we rolled out the chef's counter back in March. The chef's counter was always a goal of mine because there's 12 seats around the kitchen, and it offers a more extended experience. So I think for us, that's a sign of success for us that we're able to pull off such an elaborate menu while also doing the volume that we're doing in the dining room as well. And not to mention the bar, which has a completely separate menu. So yeah, we're in a good place.