One of D.C’s many talents in the restaurant arena is New York native Richard Beckel, executive chef of the newly opened Market Tavern in Arlington. Actually, both the chef and the restaurant are a perfect match: good food served in a sleekly elegant steakhouse ambiance, especially in its upstairs Chophouse. Beckel attended the Culinary Institute of America. From there, his career has sizzled forth with kitchens stints at Manhattan’s La Cote Basque. “I externed here,” he said, telling of how he followed up with an opening from none other than steakhouse magnate Charlie Palmer, who referred the young Beckel to his first major job and first major chef. “It was to Jean-Jacques Rachou who was the chef at La Cote Basque, and that is where I got my first job in NYC, just as [Palmer} did,” Beckel explained. “I showed up on a Monday, and at 20 I was the youngest line cook at the restaurant.”
Later, he cooked at Le Bernardin, then at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, and then he went to work with two other D.C. chefs, Yannick Cam and Michel Richard. To top all that off, Beckel staged in a Michelin-starred restaurant, Eric Westermann’s Buerehiesel in Strasbourg. He tells of pestering the executive chef for a tryout, and having the chef finally agree to give him a chance, and pointing him to a pile of vegetables to trim. Apparently, the chef could scarcely believe that a young American cook could produce such classically prepared vegetables. Beckel was hired.
