I first met Michel Richard, the great French chef who is the proprietor of Citronelle and many other fine restaurants in the U.S., in 1993. I was editor of Chocolatier magazine then, and we had recently named Chef Richard one of the Ten Best Pastry Chefs in America. To honor the chefs, we were holding an awards ceremony hosted by Robin Leach (remember him? You know, Mr. Lifestyles-of-the-Temporarily-Rich-and-Famous?). The event was to be held at Tatoo, a splashy restaurant in New York, and I was assigned the
task of picking Chef Richard up from Newark airport and dropping him at his hotel, The Essex House in New York. I found him--he was hard to miss with his full frame, bushy beard and smiling eyes—and we jumped into my rundown Saab and headed toward the city. We chatted about all sorts of things along the way, mostly food, and when we reached his hotel, he invited me along to a pre-arranged lunch with Andre Renard, Pastry Chef of The Essex House, an adorable and wonderful man who was also one of our
Ten Best Pastry Chefs. The three of us had a very pleasant, occasionally hilarious, somewhat drunken lunch at Rene Pujol, an old-time French bistro in the Theatre District with a 60-and-over customer age demographic. (It has since closed, sadly—I always feel a pang of regret when these classic restaurant dinosaurs fall prey to a tough economy. I guess I just don’t like change, in general.) Anyhow, since that day I’ve been a huge fan of M. Richard. He is one of the few great chefs who was originally a
pastry chef and, consequently, he has mastered the precision and technique of the unforgiving discipline of pastry as well as the shoot-from-the-hip, unfettered creativity of the savory side. He moves seamlessy between the worlds of sweet and savory. His book Happy in the Kitchen, which came out in 2006, is one of my favorites—it is pure genius. Over-sized and full of page after page of lush photos, Happy in the Kitchen is also full of wonderful recipes, the kind that you’ll turn to time and time again. Among my
favorites are his Crisp and Creamy Bacon-Onion Tart made with crepe batter, and his vegetarian take on Steak Tartare, Leek Tartare. Another is a macadamia tart made in the style of a pecan pie, but with maple syrup instead of corn syrup, and a little bit of almond meal to add another dimension to its nutty profile. Chef Richard calls it Pecan-less Pie. I call it perfection. Serve it with a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream or some whipped cream on top—it’s a certified winner. Just like Chef Michel Richard.
