Michel Richard

Chef-owner, Citronelle and Central
Washington, D.C.

Chef Michel Richard has an eggshell on his nose.

He’s just shown me his contraption for cutting the top off of an

egg—a weird metal skullcap with a lever that you snap—and now

that the egg’s been hollowed out, he’s turned it into a clown nose.

“My kids love this,” he says, laughing.

A clown, though, he is not. Richard is one of our nation’s

greatest chefs; as the proprietor and owner of both Citronelle and

Central in Washington, D.C., Richard has cooked for presidents (a

fact that he shrugs off, casually) and some of the greatest names in

the history of gastronomy, including the founder of nouvelle

cuisine, Paul Bocuse.

You’d think a chef of his stature would be an egotistical

monstrosity, but Richard is the absolute opposite: he is humble

and kind, and he exudes such a natural warmth that anyone who

comes near him is instantly charmed.

I’m here because Richard’s warmth and whimsy aren’t just

character traits, they’re an integral part of his cooking. His

playfulness and joie de vivre are evident in such dishes as “fake

scrambled eggs,” in which he cooks a scallop mousse in a bain-

marie and serves it in that cut-open eggshell, or potato risotto, a