Travel & Leisure

What Chefs Crave

If you want a window into a man’s soul, look in his refrigerator. If you want a window into a chef’s soul, ask him what he eats on his day off

Among the most persistent male fantasies, right up there with the secret bar where supermodels go when feeling frisky, is that of the after-hours dive where chefs slum it. Picture a joint with sawdust on the floor and masters of haute cuisine pigging out
on meat loaf, chili, or that apotheosis of California cuisine—no, not Alice Waters, but
a burrito so thick it could choke Erik Estrada. Sadly, this fabled hideaway does not actually exist. Instead, each chef has his or her own guilty pleasure. However, in the interest of making dreams come true, Best Life has put together an incredible simulation. We’ve cajoled Nobu Matsuhisa, Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, and other world-class chefs into coming clean about the food they dream about while the rest of us are dreaming about getting through to the reservation lines at their restaurants.

Just as pretty actresses like to play ugly, high-end chefs recharge their palates and expand their culinary imaginations by eating as far away from their everyday cuisines as they can. Sometimes their off-road dining is inspirational—they’ll embellish their discoveries, then nudge them onto their menus. French chef Daniel Boulud did this with great success when he introduced the DB Burger (a $29 ground-sirloin concoction with a filling of red-wine-braised short ribs, foie gras, and black truffles) at his DB Bistro Moderne in New York City. Other times what attracts them is the joy of kicking out the disciplinary jambs of haute cuisine and getting in touch with the grassroots. And sometimes it just tastes good.

Take Eric Ripert, partner of Le Bernardin, New York City’s finest seafood restaurant, who was named Outstanding Chef of the Year by the James Beard Foundation in 2003. Ripert’s favorite comfort food can be consumed only in La Massana, Andorra, at a place called La Borda de l’Avi. “In the summer, you eat in a field with geese and chickens running around, and they cut up a chicken and marinate it in garlic and rosemary, and then heat up some slate and cook the chicken for you right on the stone. It’s everything I want,” he says.

Whenever he travels, Ripert seeks out the local ethnic culture and eats what the natives do. “If I’m in South America or the Caribbean, I go where it’s maybe a little bit scary. In Piñones, in Puerto Rico, I love going along the road where they have these little shacks and they serve alcapurias, typical fried food with crab or ground beef or tripe, or with dried codfish (bacalaito)—and whole roasted baby pigs. Oh, it’s so good,” he says. And he’s always on the lookout for something he can use at the restaurant. In Peru, he discovered a potato-and-crab cake called a tausa, which he refined and now serves at Le Bernardin.

No one is quite as dedicated to his off-road food as Laurent Tourondel, the enterprising chef of three New York City restaurants, all bistros unforgettably stamped with his initials—BLT Prime, BLT Steak, and BLT Fish. When he had the restaurant Ciello in the World Trade Center, he developed an unnatural fondness for the Krispy Kreme in the building. “I wanted to put a doughnut on my menu so much that I applied for a job there,” he confesses. “They’re soft, and when that sign is blinking, they’re warm. And they’re so light, you can eat five of them at once.”
But? “They turned me down,” he adds. “Don’t know why. So I applied at Dunkin’ Donuts. They turned me down, too! I don’t like their doughnuts as much—too cakey. So I make my own doughnut. It’s great, but not as good as Krispy Kreme’s.”

The French-trained, New York City–based Tourondel thrives on the same low-end exotica that Eric Ripert does, but while Ripert might travel the planet looking for his next great seafood dish, Tourondel thinks one can sample some of the best food the world has to offer without ever leaving Manhattan. “New Yorkers don’t realize it, but more than in any city in the world, they eat different kinds of food every day. In France, you eat French food, lunch and dinner. Italy, the same thing. Not here,” he says. Some of his local favorites include Nha Trang (87 Baxter Street), arguably the
best Vietnamese fare in Chinatown. “I prefer Viet­namese to Chinese food—it’s a very clean cuisine, much less fat.” Another is a Puerto Rican place in Spanish Harlem called La Fonda Boricua, where he orders the roasted pork and, separately, the octopus salad.

If a doughnut makes Tourondel lose control, Suzanne Goin’s weakness is pizza. But not just any slice. Goin, 39, is a three-time nominee for the American Express Best Chef: California award from the Beard Foundation, and the owner of both Lucque in West Hollywood and AOC in Los Angeles. Her menus are a combination of Californian cuisine and what used to be called Continental before that term became pejorative: imaginative combos of goat cheese and fig leaves, a Mediterranean take on rock cod, and a feast of quail.