Thursday, June 16, 7:00 pm
Members $90, guests $115

“Océo arises out of the ashes of Lespinasse, the luxurious shrine to elegant French cooking,” wrote Sam Sifton of the New York Times, heralding the opening of the restaurant featuring the cuisine of Shane McBride, formerly Christian Delouvrier’s executive sous-chef at the dearly departed Lespinasse.

Food lovers and critics breathed a collective sigh of relief in early 2004 when they heard McBride would be carrying on the restaurant’s tradition of excellence, while introducing his own style of upscale American cuisine with global accents. “At last, Lespinasse alum Shane McBride has a place to call his own,” wrote Time Out New York’s Maile Carpenter of Océo. “He’s clearly having fun,” she added, “jazzing up the menu with Southern-boy touches.”

Originally from West Palm Beach, Florida, McBride began his culinary career at the age of 19, cooking under mentor Todd Gent at West Palm’s Narcissus. He went on to work at some of the area’s premier restaurants before enrolling in the Culinary Institute of America. From there, he cooked at restaurants around the country, including New Orleans’ Windsor Court Hotel and Cape Cod’s Chatham Bars Inn, before heading to New York City, where he first landed at Charlie Palmer’s acclaimed Aureole. In 1999, he joined the four-star team at Lespinasse, where he remained until the restaurant closed in 2003.

Named after an ancient port city in Southeast Asia, Océo is grounded in the classics, but boasts a modern menu of traditional items reinterpreted for contemporary guests, resulting in what the New York Post’s Christine Muhlke called “luxe-rustic dishes.” Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite of New York magazine agreed, calling the space “a sleek, sophisticated showcase for McBride’s global menu, which mixes luxury with rusticity in dishes like lobster soup with cured foie gras, and Casco Bay cod with clams and homemade chorizo.”

It’s said that restaurants are the new theater, and this Theatre District eatery doesn’t disappoint. “McBride's best dishes draw forth powerful, pure flavors from first-class raw materials,” wrote the New York Post’s Steve Cuozzo, “and he pulls off some dazzling effects.”