Once upon a time, Madison Square Park was the fashionable, exhilarating heart of the city: Theodore Roosevelt was born there, Edith Wharton lived there, Delmonico's and the Knickerbocker Club drew the rich and famous, and P. T. Barnum's Hippodrome, home of The Greatest Show on Earth, attracted crowds that remained when the site became home to the original Madison Square Garden, designed by Stanford White. In the fall of 1998, restaurateur Danny Meyer set out to bring back that Gilded Age with a stylish new restaurant evocative of the neighborhood's history. Lodged in the landmark MetLife Building, Eleven Madison Park features a gold-leaf ceiling in the bar, soaring marble heights in the dining room, terrazzo floors, Deco details, and views of the park, all of which suits Kerry Heffernan's urbane, luxurious, French-infused food to a T.

Heffernan embodies the perfect mix of sophisticated Americanness and French sensibility that his food showcases so effectively. Raised in Connecticut, he began working in local restaurants at the age of 14. Two years later, he landed a part-time job at New York's Périgord Park, where he first met David Bouley. After graduating second in his class from the CIA, Heffernan landed a spot on the line at the Waldorf-Astoria. A yearlong stint at Le Cygne in Geneva followed, as did periodic stages in Holland, Belgium, France and Austria. Back in New York, Heffernan worked his way up the line in the kitchens of Montrachet, Le Régence, Restaurant Bouley, and Mondrian. He took charge for the first time at One Fifth, serving as chef de cuisine for Alfred Portale and earning terrific reviews. In 1993, Heffernan became executive chef at the Westbury Hotel's famed Polo restaurant. Five years later, Meyer tapped him for Eleven Madison Park.

In his new home, Heffernan draws on his French training, his American ingenuity, and his finely honed palate to create food so good it earned four stars from Daniel Young of the Daily News. Heffernan, Young wrote admiringly, "is not a flashy cook. The drama of his elegant dishes is experienced through incidental flashes of secondary flavors, not through radical designs or combinations that steal attention from the star ingredients. His way of showing off was like Fred Astaire's: Make it look effortless."