On a recent afternoon at Le Coucou, Manhattan’s most fashionable restaurant, beverage director Aaron Thorp stood in his petite bar room describing how he came to preside over the most impressive collection of Chartreuse in the United States.
Sifting through the 15 choices on his menu, Thorp showed off a kingly three-liter bottle and said that the only goal of chef Daniel Rose was, very simply, to make sure Le Coucou’s bar program matched the Parisian classicism of its kitchen. “It’s wasn’t necessarily that it was cool,” Thorp said of the commitment to this herbal liqueur. “It was just French. He didn't feel like there was a more fun way to be more French.”
