Taquet changing hands
Jean-Francois Taquet, who's been running his eponymous landmark Main Line restaurant from New Zealand, is bowing out. Two old friends will take it over.
Restaurant Taquet without Taquet?
Jean-Francois Taquet has been running his eponymous Main Line restaurant from New Zealand for a decade now. But I hear that preparations are quietly underway for him to bow out completely.
His successors will be chef Francis Layrle and front-of-the-house veteran Jeff Ondria, who confirms that a sale is planned.
Layrle emigrated from France around the same time Taquet did (1980). For more than a decade, Layrle was chef at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. Ondria's past includes the original Taquet and seven years at Le Bec-Fin.
Layrle's style is more formal. Ondria says they'll work on an orderly transition (60 days). The Taquet name will come down at the end of the summer.
Taquet -- the restaurant -- started in 1987 at Radnor Raquet Club. The chef had worked at La Truffe and the Fountain at the Four Seasons. In 1992, Taquet moved the restaurant into the Wayne Hotel, and the Radnor restaurant became Passerelle under his former partner, Marty Grims. (Passerelle is now Pond under Abde Darouch, another longtime Taquet chef.)