The Color Saffron

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s dirty secret emerges — The Gates aren’t really “saffron”:

When it comes to art and food, everyone is a critic.

That’s the case with “The Gates,” the public art snaking through 23 miles of Central Park through Sunday. The artists who produced this series of flags, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, say it is the color of saffron. New Yorkers who know their way around a kitchen disagree.

“Saffron produces a golden color, like a taxicab,” said Ed Schoenfeld, a restaurant consultant and an expert cook who lives in Brooklyn. Like many other cooks, he was surprised that the artists called the fabric saffron. “This color is orange – more like a persimmon than saffron,” he said.

To the cook, saffron is the color of Provençal bouillabaisse, Milanese risotto, and Indian shrikhand.

It is not the color of a crossing guard’s safety vest.

It makes a difference when chefs are charged with devising saffron-related dishes to complement the event:

Not that a color correction would matter much in some New York restaurants, where any promotion in February can seem like a good idea. NYC & Company, a publicly financed organization that promotes the city, has encouraged restaurants to develop special saffron menus in honor of “The Gates.”

But a dish made golden with saffron does not look much like a “Gate.” So at Bolo, for instance, the chef de cuisine, Dan Mihalko, had to add carrots to his saffron sauce to produce the right color.

Bill Yosses, the chef at Josephs, runs his saffron Pavlova under the broiler to add some toasty hues to the meringue. “It’s the real saffron color – it’s yellow orange,” he said.

At Django the chef Cedric Tovar did his best to make the promotion work, though he said he does not understand the relationship between “The Gates” and the spice, or even between public art and his kitchen.

Still, he soldiered on. He put a bouillabaisse with saffron on the menu, then added an appetizer of grilled stuffed squid punched up with a sauce of piquillo peppers, vinegar and olive oil. The sauce, he says, is orange. And saffron-free.

“I guess the color is what they want,” he said. “I haven’t seen ‘The Gates’ myself.”

And with that, I see the true genius behind Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Just when you’re sick to death of reading about their installations, they’re over. Can I say it? I will: Please, Lord, make it stop! (And, God willing, Sunday it should!)