Event Location:
Brasserie 8 1/2
9 West 57th Street

Sunday, April 29, 6:00 p.m.*
Members $225, guests $275

* Please note special time.

For centuries, Westerners have looked upon France as the world's culinary capital. And even in the current epicurean climate — the heyday of fusion — experiencing fine French cuisine in France remains almost a rite of passage for aspiring chefs in the United States. James Beard himself, a tireless promoter of all food American, reserved some of his most extravagant praise for the food of France, and in 1953 co-wrote a cookbook on Paris Cuisine. This year, in honor of what would have been Beard's 98th birthday, we have recruited an elite group of French chefs, all members of the esteemed Les Maîtres Cuisiniers de France, to fête us in the finest of French food fashion.

Les Maîtres Cuisiniers de France was founded by the French government in 1951 (originally as Maîtres-Queux) in order to recognize the most important chefs in what many think is the most important culinary nation in the world. Each year, it names a number of chefs to its elite roster. A mere 50 chefs in the United States have attained the title, and for this dinner we are bringing you the best of a select bunch. The organization's charter outlines 12 tenets that a Master Chef must live by, a list that is embodied by the chefs for our very special birthday dinner.

"The Master Chef of France must be aware that he belongs to a renowned cultural tradition."

"Mr. Delouvrier is a cook whose entire culinary life is a testament to tradition." That's Lespinasse executive chef Christian Delouvrier being referred to, and the characterization comes from The New York Times, which continued, "He acquired his restaurant skills methodically and slowly in France, migrated to the United States, and continually honed his art." Like many a French chef, Delouvrier's earliest teachers were his mother and grandmother. He grew up in Gascony, one of the world's great food regions, but after graduating from hotel school, he elected to ramble, working in kitchens in Montreal, the Bahamas, Paris, and, from 1971 on, the United States. Ten years later, under compatriot Alain Senderens, he helped turn Maurice in the Hotel Parker Meridien into one of New York's most celebrated kitchens. At his next post, Les Célébrités in the Essex House, Delouvrier won high praise, but it is at Lespinasse that he has truly hit his stride. The New York Times gave him a perfect four-star score; Gael Greene wrote of his "audacious invention" and "provocative flavors" in New York; and "Toque of the Town" columnist Gary Walther called Lespinasse "Manhattan's Michelin three-star experience."

"As heir to a great past, his mission is to serve the culinary art by expanding its influence and providing for its future."

For Raymond Ost, the future is Sandrine's, the Boston restaurant named for his daughter where each night he prepares the rich, robust foods of his native Alsace. "Ost has created the most elegant bistro imaginable," Robert Nadeau wrote in Boston Phoenix, "and the most exquisitely subtle Alsatian food." Ost trained the old-fashioned way, apprenticing in French kitchens from the age of 13, then studying at the Ecole Hôtelier in Strasbourg. He moved to nearby Germany, but craving a change of scene, many of them in fact, he took a job with Le Meridien Hotels. The luxe hotel chain sent him around the world — to Martinique, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, and San Francisco. In Boston, the final stop on his Le Meriden tour, he earned raves for his cooking at Julien, the hotel's rarefied fine-dining restaurant. These days, Ost is happily ensconced at Sandrine's, making the food he knows best (and that Americans should know better.) Esquire critic John Mariani included the restaurant on his Best New Restaurants list, writing, "I'd be here three times a week if I lived in Cambridge."

"Versatile by nature, he must not only be a chef of quality but also a restaurateur of the highest order."

This Maître Cuisinier de France tenet could have been written for Michel Richard, "one of the best French chefs cooking in this country," according to Washington Post critic Phyllis Richman. Like Ost, Richard began his career at 13 as an apprentice. As a young man, he moved from his native Brittany to Paris to work for the legendary Gaston Lenôtre, and in 1974 headed to the States to run Lenôtre's New York outpost. In Santa Fe, Richard ran the French Pastry Shop; within a year, the entrepreneurial chef had purchased the place. Despite the shop's success, Santa Fe struck the ambitious Richard as a one-brioche town. Seeking a bigger stage on which to play, he picked up his pastry kit and headed to Los Angeles. There he opened another critically acclaimed pastry shop. Still, Richard dreamed of bigger things. In 1987 he opened Citrus. It quickly became, as Elana Steinberg phrased it in VIVE la cuisine, a "culinary blockbuster." Richard's wildly creative style reverberated far and wide and had a profound impact on the growing California cuisine movement. Today, Richard commutes between Santa Barbara and Washington, D.C. to oversee Citronelle. Writing in The New York Times, Marian Burros praised "the brilliance of his food."

"For the Master Chef of France, his scrupulous regard for his culinary principles excludes neither professional development nor the spirit of creativity appropriate for the expression of his individual personality."

Philippe Chin is not your conventional French chef. As critic Thom Cardwell once wrote of him, "Philippe Chin belongs to that select group of chefs whose captivating personalities are uniquely intertwined with their individual culinary achievements." The son of French mother and a French-Chinese father (and grandson of the proprietor of one of the first Chinese restaurants in Paris), Chin grew up versed in the classic cuisines of both cultures. After culinary school in Paris, the 19-year-old Chin was named executive chef of a top restaurant in St. Maarten. In 1986, Chin headed to the States, where he settled in Philadelphia and for a time oversaw the dining rooms at the tony Rittenhouse Hotel. Breaking out on his own at Chanterelles, Chin received high praise for his elegant Asian-French fusion food, including a Best New restaurant of 1994 nod from Zagat guide and a Gourmet Top Table award. His next venture, Philippe at the Locust Club and ChinChin, was an ambitious private dining room/event space/restaurant where, as Jewish Exponent critic Myra Chanin wrote, "The more you eat, the better it gets." Sadly, Chin closed the restaurant last winter. In 1997, Chin became the youngest chef ever to be inducted into the Maîtres Cuisiniers de France.

"The first stage of his work consists of selecting the finest of raw products and constantly striving for perfection."

René Bajeux is passionate about ingredients. He developed his appreciation for goose, pork, berries, cheese, and other wonderful products as a boy growing up in Alsace, which is rich in all of them, and later while traveling around the world as a cook with the French navy. (In a review for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, S.M. Hahn praised Bajeux's "far-flung vocabulary of exotic ingredients from all over the world.") In North America, Bajeux worked in Montreal, Chicago, California, and Hawaii before finding a berth in New Orleans at the elegant Grill Room in the Windsor Court hotel. Under Bajeux's direction, the restaurant has earned five stars from Mobil Travel Guide, making it the only restaurant in Louisiana to hold that honor, and was named a Top Table by Gourmet. An article in Visitor noted that Bajeux "has great reverence for the tuna." He has the same attitude toward all his ingredients. In honor of Beard's birthday we'll taste a preview of his newest venture, René at the Renaissance Père Marquette Hotel, which will open in August.

As a native of Panama, Julian Alonzo, the host chef for our James Beard's birthday fête, doesn't qualify for the title Maître Cuisinier de France. But it's not for lack of talent. Over the years, Alonzo has worked under Manhattan's best and brightest, among them David Bouley, Patrick Clark, David Ruggerio, and Ed Brown. Nor is Alonzo entirely without French roots. He trained at the French Culinary Institute in New York, then spent six months in the kitchens of the formidable Guy Savoy in Paris. And, like many a French chef, he cites his mom as an early and profound culinary influence. These days, at the architecturally stunning Brasserie 8 1/2, Alonzo is turning out reinterpretations of French brasserie classics with great flair. As Tess Ghilaga wrote in Hamptons Magazine, "Despite the design extravaganza, the real masterpiece at Brasserie 8 1/2 is Julian Alonzo."

Fine French wines will accompany each course of our birthday dinner, but to open and close the meal we will rely on an American original, Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey. Jack Daniel may have been as American as they come, but he had more than a little something in common with the most prominent spirits producers in France — his exacting standards and his superlative product. Jack Daniel Distillery has long been a supporter of The James Beard Foundation; this year Lynne Tolley, Jack Daniel's great-grand niece, will continue a venerable Beard Birthday Dinner tradition and raise her glass — filled with Jack Daniel's exceptional Single Barrel Tennessee Whiskey — to toast James Beard, Les Maîtres Cuisiniers de France, Brasserie 8 1/2, and a delicious dinner. Joyeux anniversaire, Jim!