Michel Richard, who gained interest in cooking at a very young age of only seven years, is a popular French chef and owner of Central restaurant in Washington, D.C. and Citronelle restaurant (award winning restaurant) located in Carmel and Georgetown. A French accent can be seen in almost all Michel Richard recipes, due to his love and passion for French food. The chef calls himself as “Captain Crunch” as he is fond of adding crispiness to his dishes.
Early Life of Chef Michel Richard
Michel Richard, having been born in March in the year 1948 in Brittany, was brought up in Champagne, who started to take interest in cooking during his childhood only. Due to keen interest in becoming a chef, Michel served one of the hotels in Reims as apprentice baker. Thereafter, he gave his services to Maison Lenotre bakery in Paris, where he worked under Gaston Lenotre, a well known French Pastry Chef. From here, the chef’s culinary career excelled, where he evolved from running a pastry kitchen to operating various restaurants as a well known chef, with Michel Richard recipes gaining huge popularity and fame due to uniqueness and distinctness.
Professional Life of Chef Michel Richard
After gaining some experience while working in a few bakeries and hotels, Michel Richard, went to Santa Fe, in New Mexico and ran “The French Pastry Shop”, located in La Fonda Hotel.
In the year 1977, the chef opened Michel Richard Pastry Shop, at Los Angeles. The profits earned from the pastry shop were used by the chef while eating various kinds of foods in French restaurants, so as to gain knowledge about the taste and flavor of the food, thus helping him to proceed ahead in his culinary career and moving towards gaining expertise in main course meals and other kinds of dishes apart from having specialization in pastries. From hereon, the chef started to develop his own recipes, where he used his skills of slicing, dicing, and shaping the dishes to come up with fabulous Michel Richard recipes.
After 10 years, in the year 1987, the chef opened his own restaurant at Los Angeles by the name “Citrus”. Michel Richard opened Satellites of Citrus in various places like Baltimore, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and Washington. However, all of them were shut down later on.
Thereafter, the chef came up with Citronelle Restaurant in various places like Santa Barbara, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Georgetown, and Carmel. Michel Richard also owns Central restaurant in Washington.
Cookbooks of Michel Richard
There are two cookbooks in the name of the chef, which include “Michel Richard's Home Cooking with a French Accent”, Morrow, NY published in January 1993) and “Happy in the Kitchen: The Craft of Cooking the Art of Eating”, Artisan, published in October 2006. Both the cookbooks contain clear and wonderful Michel Richard recipes. His recent cookbook “Happy in the kitchen” contains amazing three dinner time recipes which would really help in creating an unforgettable dinner. These three recipes include Romaine on Romaine (romaine leaves, with creamy romaine dressing served as salad), Asparagus Salmon (flavored dish of salmon and asparagus stuffed in fish), and Le Kit Cat (chocolate and peanut butter candies served as dessert).
Television Appearance
Michel Richard has been seen in a few episodes of various TV shows like “Baking with Julia”, “How to Cook Everything; Bittman Takes on America's Chefs”, “Great Chefs – Great Cities”, and “Chef's Story”.
