Word: chefs
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Behind the restaurant's success is its inventive chef-owner, Jean Banchet, 41. Stocky, with brown curly hair and square beard, he looks like a scaled-down version of Luciano Pavarotti and has the artistic temperament to match. Banchet was trained in the great restaurants of France, including that of Paul Bocuse, the high priest of la nouvelle cuisine. He commands his array of convection ovens, cannibal-size stockpots and giant food processors with the same authority that Sir Georg Solti displays when conducting the Chicago Symphony. "It's like an orchestra," Banchet explains, "where every piece must...
...Français Maestro Banchet puts on a gala performance for two seatings a night, six nights a week. From noon to midnight he prowls the stainless-steel corridors of his ultramodern kitchen, setting a whirlwind pace for his 32-member staff. "Sacrebleu! Sacrebleu!" he shouts at a sous-chef when something goes wrong. One minute he is throwing whole fistfuls of truffles into a twelve-quart mixing bowl. Next he starts a pheasant paté, followed by a lobster and crayfish mousse. Tasting each creation in turn, he makes several mid-course corrections, adding a little salt here...
Shortly before 6, the dining room at Le Français has reached a state of burnished perfection. Above, dark wood beams and bronze chandeliers. Below, fresh flowers, crisp linen, the gleam of silver and crystal. Doris Banchet, the German-born wife of the chef, appears by the entrance in a chic black dress adorned with a golden rooster brooch, "the sign of good cuisine," she explains. Now it is the waiters, formal in their tuxedos, who take over, announcing the program and pacing the elaborate performance. The first guests arrive: James and Judy Horn, a pair of young Chicago...
...building's kitchen was commandeered by Brezhnev's personal chef, Ivan Biryukov, who prepared meals carefully supervised by physicians from food flown in from Moscow. The Soviet leader even ate Biryukov's concoction-a kind of puree of cooked vegetables-at the official dinner. When Biryukov was not in the kitchen, it was kept locked and guarded...
Marshall Marcovitz, 45, is the president and founder of the Chefs Catalog in Deerfield, Ill. His 450-item catalogue sells professional-quality gourmet kitchenware to home chefs. Five years ago Marcovitz left a 20-year career with Edward Don & Co., a restaurant supplier, to market his own pots, pans and food processors. Marcovitz, a home chef who says he has used every item in his catalogue, is looking for sales of $5 million this year...