Friday, February 6, 7:00 pm
Members $90, guests $115

Even as they toil in five-star kitchens, sending out their towering creations under silver domes, many chefs dream of having a small, neighborhood restaurant to call their own. Something outside the city, where trends aren’t as dictatorial and space isn’t so much at a premium. John Halligan seems to have had that dream, and with The Park Steakhouse in Park Ridge, New Jersey, which he co-owns with Randy Carson, he has reinvigorated one of the area’s best-liked restaurants.

After taking over the restaurant last fall, Halligan revamped the classic menu, keeping favorites such as the dry-aged 28-ounce porterhouse and New York sirloin while adding luxurious touches such as white-truffle-potato-leek soup with foie gras and a spinach salad with barbecued duck, blue cheese, and port wine reduction. The Park has its own smoker, with which the kitchen produces smoked salmon, smoked lobster chili, and hickory-smoked rack of lamb. Halligan has also expanded and updated The Park Steakhouse wine list, adding quality wines from California, Oregon, and Washington State. That’s Life! magazine cautioned readers not to overlook The Park for restaurants in New York, calling it a “five-star dining experience,” and Halligan “one of America’s…culinary visionaries.” The magazine’s writer especially loved the “perfect” filet mignon and “exquisite” rack of lamb.

Halligan grew up just miles away from The Park, in Hillsdale, New Jersey. After attending the CIA, he worked at some of Manhattan’s top hotels: the Park Lane, the Regency, and Halcyon at the RIHGA Royal Hotel, where he instituted the restaurant’s Great American Chefs series, co-sponsored by Gourmet, for which 16 chefs, including headliners Charlie Trotter, Jean-Louis Palladin, and Alessandro Stratta, cooked special dinners at Halcyon. (He plans to do the same with a new Evenings at The Park series at The Park.) Halligan also worked at St. James’ Club and Hotel in Los Angeles and, most recently, he was executive chef of 55 Wall at the Regent Wall Street. In the hotel’s spectacular Greek Revival lobby, he hosted the chefs of “Legendary Restaurants of New York City” for our very own 2001 Holiday Auction, despite the difficulties brought on by the attack on the World Trade Center, just blocks away.

A graduate of the CIA, sous-chef John Benjamin has been with The Park since 2001. He has worked at Aureole, the Lenox Room, and Tir Na Nog in Manhattan; The French Laundry in Yountville, and Tibwin Grill in New Haven.