US · esquire.com

Advice From One of the World's Best Chefs

A few weeks ago, Alain Ducasse, wizened keeper of all French culinary tradition, met me in a walnut-walled 19th-century Bordeaux apothecary. There he sat, slightly slumped, his hair snowy white, his eyes peering over his glasses beneath wild eyebrows. Beside him was Emmanuelle Perrier, his communications director and longtime translator. I wish we had been in France, but it was Thursday and I had to pick up my kids from school in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The incessant honking of horns was a distant but audible reminder that we were actually in midtown Manhattan. The room—dubbed L’Officine—is on the second floor of Ducasse’s New York bistro, Benoit, housed in the former home of La Côte Basque. At 67, Ducasse is stepping back, maybe one step, maybe a flurry of them. “This year, I made a resolution,” he writes, “marking a shift that is crucial for me and the rest of the group. I want to encourage a generation of talented people in their thirties and place them in the highest positions.”


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