Post Magazine: Four-Star Stress

Culinary genius has lifted Citronelle's Michel Richard above a past out of Dickens, but he's still only as good as his next meal.

April Witt , whose story about the flamboyant chef appeared in yesterday's Washington Post Magazine , will be online today to field questions and comments.

April Witt is a Magazine staff writer.

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April Witt: Good afternoon. Thanks to anyone joining me when they could be outside enjoying the glorious weather. Writing about Michel was a bit of a departure for me. I love food and fine dining. Once, long ago, I was a restaurant critic. In six years as a reporter for The Washington Post I have writen about almost every topic but food. (My last story for the magazine was on Iraq.) Following Michel Richard was hardly hardship duty.

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Silver Spring, Md.: How can a meat and potatoes, fast-food family with a limited budget develop the kind of educated palate it takes to appreciate this kind of cooking? Thanks!

April Witt: That's a difficult question to answer. Michel's food is expensive to enjoy in his restaurant, and can even be expensive to try to replicate at home. He uses only the finest ingredients, like sushi-grade tuna. It's not unusual for Citronelle to spend a few hundred dollars on a single large fish that yields a relatively small number of portions. Michel's new book, Happy in the Kitchen, does include instructions for dishes that are not expensive to produce, such as a potato gratin that is all crust. Eventually, his new book will turn up in local libraries, I would imagine, and you could experiment with executing that. If your question is more general, how do you educate your palate on a budget, I think the answer is much easier. I follow local resturants reviewers to find inexpensive restaurants that offer excellent food.

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Latrobe, Pa.: You don't have to answer this in your chat, but one phrase in your excellent article, that Chef Richard has diabetes, really gave me pause. Like Chef Richard, my father was a larger than life figure who enjoyed good food, good wine and other attributes of the good life. But he found it impossible to live with the restrictions diabetes placed on his lifestyle and wound up taking his own life. I'm battling the disease myself, with mixed results, and can only imagine how hard living on "rabbit food" (my dad's phrase) must be for someone used to such superb cuisine. But, if not for his own sake, but for that of is family, friends, and the thousands of people who enjoy his food, I hope that he will try. New developments are happening every day, so if he can just keep things from progressing further there may yet be hope. I wish him good luck in this effort.

April Witt: Thanks for taking time to comment on a topic that is so personally important to you. Change is obviously hard for everyone. To remain a great chef turning out food that is as perfect as is humanly possible, Michel must taste - and taste again - for several hours every day. It would be impossible for him to develop new dishes, or even make sure that dishes he's made one hundred times, remain up to his standards if he doesn't constantly taste. Just following him around for several days, and tasting some of what he tasted, I gained a couple of pounds.

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Washington, DC: Hello April,

I sincerely appreciated your article about Michel Richard. What a life story! Near the end of the 10-course tasting menu w/ Phyllis Richman and her friends, Ann Yonkers asked about Michel's support of local farmers. How interested is M.Richard in sourcing food from local producers?

Thanks!

-Peter

April Witt: Thanks. I'm glad you liked the story. I didn't know anything about Michel's life story when I began reporting on him. Once I understood his personal history, I was amazed at how he transcended it. He really does devote himself to making himself and others happy with food. You asked if Michel is interested in getting food from local producers. Michel is obviously interested in all sources for great product. He's constantly trying new products to try to bring new tastes and textures to his food.

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Alexandria, Va: My 32 year old daughter loves to cook and is always inventing her own dishes. It is the only time she is really relaxed. She would love to do this for a living, but she is afraid to take a job in a restaurant (low pay??) and/or go to culinary school because she thinks if she does, she will lose her love of cooking in the technical side of it. Any suggestions?

April Witt: Based on my experience in the kitchen at Citronelle, learning the technical side of food does not rob chefs of their passion for cuisince. On the contrary, it gives them a solid platform from which to pursue their passion and take great experimental leaps. If your daughter doesn't try to pursue cuisine, by taking a low-level job in a good resturant kitchen, or enrolling in classes, how will she know if that's her calling?

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Washington, D.C.: Hello Ms. Witt,

The story on Michel Richard is truly inspiring. For everyone who has tough times in their childhood and wants to give up, this story is true inspiration of how to overcome adversity and make something of yourself.

How in the world did you get this great Chef to open up with his painful upbringing?

April Witt: Thanks for your question. I'm glad you found the story inspiring. I certainly found Michel inspiring. People go around complaining about nothing. Michel has endured real hardship and rarely mentions it. I'm not sure why Michel decided to tell me about his childhood. I don't think he's told other reporters his background before. At least, I couldn't find a published account of his telling another journalist. I hope he opened up to me because he sensed that I would handly his life story with care. When I do a profile on someone, I try hard to understand them deeply so I can convey them accurately to readers. Hearing Michel's life story only deepened my respect for him. He is a very funny, playful man. He is somebody who is constantly trying to achieve joy and share it with others through his food.

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Citronelle: Fantastic story, April. I am a major fan of Michael Richard and his cuisine. You mentioned in the story that he needs to negotiate a new lease or find a new home for Citronelle. How likely do you think it is that he'll have to leave the current location? While I love the food I believe the restaurant itself could use a makeover.

April Witt: I'm not privy to the current state of negotiations between Michel and the hotel chain. From talking to Michel, I think he'll strike a deal that he thinks is good for him, and for his customers, or he will do something new. If he stays at the hotel, I believe the deal would include overhauling the dining room.

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Quick question: I thought it was a great article and really enjoyed reading it - right up until the part where the chef drank some wine from a glass and then poured the rest into the sauce he was cooking. You could have told me he spat in the food and I would not have been more grossed out. I have to say I kept wondering about the continual tasting (do they double dip) but then saw that you wrote they used plastic spoons so I figured each taste got a new spoon. Maybe you meant to say he dumped the rest of the bottle into the sauce????Please tell me that this checf did not drink part of a glass of wine and then dunp all of his germs into food that he was planning on serving to others. If he did, why would he bother to care about waiters' fingerprints on the rims of dishes when he basically just spit in the food.

April Witt: The sauce was on the stove, and returned to a low boil, which would have killed the germs. I have worked in more than one restaurant. Citronelle's kitchen is spotless. Michel is obsessive about cleanliness and order. I have a mother who is such a germ-freak that she would make television's Monk character look like a slob. So I'm keenly familiar with your reaction to the wine anecdote. Trust me: you are safer eating at Citronelle than any other restaurant of my experience. Until you get the bill. Then you might get chest pains.

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Chevy Chase, Md: Hello,

What a terrific article. Where do you think Michel draws his inner courage from? I think most people with his background would be found somewhere in a gutter at age 58.

April Witt: The human spirit is a great mystery. The longer I live, the more I learn about people, I'm convinced that some people are simply born a spirit so strong nothing can extinguish it. Michel seems to be one of those people. I think one clue to his triumph may be the little book on artists that he treasured as a child. He responded early to beauty and artistry, and always sought it. I think that may have been salvational for him.

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Washington, D.C.: French food does not have to be expensive. Mr. Richard and many other excellent French chefs do get the best, and most expensive, ingredients to cook their meals, but we have to keep in mind that they run businesses for a profit, catering to a mostly sophisticated and demanding clientele. With money to spend.

I have been learning French cooking for a while now, and get excellent ingredients, from local grocery stores, farmer's markets, Whole foods, Trader Joe's, etc., and probably spend about the same --or less, when preparing a classic French dish.

An example of this approach is shown every Saturday afternoon by chef Jacques Pepin on PBS: he makes great French meals with simple, inexpensive, everyday ingredients...

April Witt: I agree with you. Personally, I make a lot of French and Italian peasant food. It's not expensive to make. It robust and full of the bold flavors of garlic and fresh herbs. A white bean salad with sage probably costs less per serving than a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich.

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Bravo!: What a wonderfully told story about a terrific man and chef who has had to overcome some serious obstacles. Now if only he could find those square apples...

April Witt: Trust me. He'll play around with apples until he find some great presentation where he squares apples. And with every failed attempt he'll chuckle and entertain himself. One day I watched him reject - again and again - some streudel pastry he was trying to create. Nothing he did achieved his goals. Yet he sat there tasting the rejects and saying, "I love my failure. I love my failure." I tasted it. I love it too.

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Silver Spring Md: OK, enough is enough. What kind of world do you live in? Who cares about some snob chef who only serves rich people? Come on! You should write stories about things most people can relate to, not just rich snobs.

signed,

Jealous

April Witt: Michel is one of the least snobby or pretentious people I've ever met in his field. Sitting down to dinner at Citronelle is beyond the means of most people. Reading an article about how that food is made cost you almost nothing. (Unless you read it on line, and then it cost you nothing.) I think the tale of a man who overcame heartache to pursues his passion and achieve greatness is universal, not exclusive. I don't have to be able to afford dinner at Citronelle to find Michel interesting.

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Washington, DC: April: Thanks for a great article. Did you happen to get a sense of which local chefs Michel admires?

April Witt: Michel is too diplomatic to praise some chefs over others. He tries hard to have cordial, fraternal relations with other chefs. He's generous in his comments about all the top local chefs. He made a point of telling me that he never criticizes the cuisine of other chefs. That, he said, would be like complaining about the food at a relatives' home.

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Olney, Md: Ms. Witt,

There is a quote in the article that I loved; "Failure is not a problem," he says. "It's not trying that's the problem. That's what Michel tells us every day. So I'm trying."

Where in the world did Michel develop such strength? Do you think it was the tough love he had as a child; or do you believe some people are granted tougher genes than others?

April Witt: I think I touched on this topic above. But yes, I do think some people are granted tougher genes than others. Some people are crushed by adversity. Other grow bitter. I think people who manage to shrug it off, at least to some degree, both have a DNA-encoded gift and make a conscious determination to be happy.

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Potomac, Md: Where in the world does this Chef get his raw food from? I have often heard that Restuarants get better cuts of meat and fish than the consumer. How can I get this quality of raw food?

April Witt: It's hard work to find the best suppliers. At Citronelle, only two employees (the executive chef and the executive sous chef) know where all their products are purchased. They work very hard to locate the best, and stay on top of suppliers to make sure that quality is consistent over time. Cedric, the sous chef, keeps his cell phone with him everywhere he goes. He takes calls from suppliers in the middle of the night. As Michel says, if you put a gorgeous, perfectly ripe strawberry in front of a diner you don't have to do too much to it to look brilliant. I don't know many home chefs who have the time to devote to pursuit of perfect products.

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Arlington, Va: So, despite all the rumors I've heard about Michel Richard's temper and ability to terrorize those who work for him (which your article also alludes to), in the end it sounds he won you over-- both in the article and this chat. Your story about his past also helps explain the man; his gratitude toward even the pastry chef who tormented him is telling (and his goodwill toward his mother).

I think, however (arguably of course) that present-day American culture is less forgiving towards those with a "heart of gold" but an occasionally harsh exterior. Is this the kind of guy M. Richard seemed to you, or more like an exterior of gold, too, with occasional harsh moments? What was the attitude of most of the people who work with him-- enamored, awed, fearful?

I know I'm awed. Thanks for the terrific article.

April Witt: Michel is not an easy man to work with. He has impossibly high standards for others. More importantly, he has impossibly high standards for himself. He obviously has the respect and loyalty of key employees. I would imagine that employees have an easier time accepting his perfectionism because they see that he is hardest of all on himself. His perfectionism is tempered with good humor. How afraid can anyone be of a man who walks around laughing and making food sound effects?

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Falls Church, Va: April -- When does he see his family? He is working most evenings, I assume...

April Witt: That's obviously a built-in problem in Michel's line of work. Michel has frequently traded time with his family for time in his restaurant kitchen. That's hard on all of them.

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Re: Tastings of foods: I missed that part (read right over it), but I have to say that I too think it's totally gross to double dip tasting spoons or pour 1/2 drunk glass of wine into someone elses sauce. At this caliber of restaurant it's beyond comprehension even. So. . . Chefs please note, if we aren't sleeping with you, we don't want your spit, or any other potential body fluids, in our foods. Saying it's been cooked out doesn't make it any less gross.

April Witt: They don't double dip. There are containers of small, white plastic spoons located all over Citronelle's kitchen. Chefs use the spoons once to taste as they cook, then they throw them out.

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Eat, drink and make deadline: Did you gain any weight in reporting this piece? I'd love to write about food, however I'm afraid that I would gain about three pounds per story - more when writing about French food!

April Witt: I did gain weight reporting this story. When Michel tasted something, I tasted it so I could better describe what he thought was a success or failure. (And no germ-phobics I did not double dip!) After I left Michel's kitchen I had to eat rabbit food for a week.

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Rockville, Md: I think the article is disgusting. While plain folk are trying to figure out how to pay for basic utilities and gasoline, both of which are skyrocketing in costs, you are writing about some pie in the sky Rich Chef, who caters to even richer clientele. The idea of a $275 dinner is disgusting. Don't you think those people would be better off giving that money to Charity?

April Witt: I can certainly understand your response. I don't spend $275 for dinners. The vast majority of Americans can't and don't. I've spent much more of my career writing about poverty, and the suffering of the poor, than I have chronicling the lifestyles of the rich and famous. That said, one of the things that I like best about being a journalist is the opportunity to take readers places they would never go except vicariously through the magic of reading. I don't judge the people or places I go. I just try to understand them so I can accurately show them to readers. I make no apologies for that.

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Arlington, Va: Dear Ms. Witt:

I just wanted to write in to tell you how much I enjoyed your feature on Chef Michel -- I was most fascinated to read about his early upbringing and his chef-teachers. My only wish is that you would have spent more time sharing about his adult personal life, more so than just the one detail that he has had three wives and five kids (perhaps he didn't care to share that). Thanks for a great piece!

April Witt: Thanks for your comment. Thanks to everyone who sent a question or comment. Our time is up now. Goodbye.

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