NYC restaurant quiz: What’s the most important quality of a hotshot chef?

a) cooking skills
b) a pretty face
c) both (shout out to Scotty, Marcus, and Brad!)

Trick question. The real answer is d) brains. And few chefs are smarter (and, okay, notoriously cuter and more deft with a saute pan) than David Bouley.

Today marks the official opening of Bouley Bakery & Market. A labor of love fifteen years in the making, BBM occupies the three-story building across the street from Bouley and Danube. It’s part market, part take-out, part restaurant, part school — in sum, the ultimate haven for the gastronomically inclined.

Bouley, famously passionate about sourcing the best, freshest products possible, wants you to be able to buy the same tomatoes and lobsters that he does. So he’s adding grocer to his resume. Protein and produce are for sale in the cellar. The street level is for carbs (serious ones at that) and take-out. (Note the oven, which took three weeks to build out of Tuscan cobblestones.)

By day, the upstairs dining room will have seating for take-out customers. It’s also a classroom, where, in the coming months, Bouley (and his friends) will teach the art of no-fuss, everyday menu prep. By night, the space is a no-reservation, modestly priced restaurant where, yes, Bouley will be cooking.

And there he goes. Acing it again.

Bouley Bakery & Market, 130 West Broadway, at Duane Street (212-608-5829).