In the summer of 2007, I was working on a story for THE WEEKLY STANDARD about the cult of celebrity chefs. As part of my reporting, I spent time with Michel Richard, who then ran two restaurants, the acclaimed Citronelle and the brasserie Central Michel Richard. It was inside the gastronomic temple of Citronelle that I interviewed the chef.

Richard, wearing his cooking whites, was in exceedingly good spirits, having just won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef. He’d often been likened to Santa Claus, which I found to be an accurate assessment, right down to the “round belly, that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.” Some of the other cooks were setting up their mise en place and speaking to each other in French. On a nearby counter was a tray of glistening pink filet mignons. The maître d’ (and Michel’s brother-in-law) poured us two glasses of a 2005 Chassagne Montrachet. Later, Richard brought out an appetizer known as a surf-and-turf “mosaic” consisting of thinly sliced carpaccios of beef, scallops, salmon, and vegetables. Deftly scattered throughout this colorful dish were rice crispies, giving it the occasional crunch. “Voila!” said the chef. “Like Jackson Pollack.”