Michel Richard

It's an early night at Michel Richard, as they will tell you when you phone for a reservation. "We stop at nine," says a lilting French accent so unequivocally that you think you are back in Paris fighting with the maitre d' for a prime-time reservation at Tour D'Argent. "Too bad," you'll feel like saying, but don't. Go before 9 p.m., for heaven's sake. It's worth it.

Everything's bigger in Las Vegas , including the new Central Michel Richard restaurant that will be whipping up lobster burgers and fried chicken 24 hours a day at Caesars Palace. The celebrity chef's newest addition to his culinary raves Citronelle and Central in Washington, D.C., opens at noon Wednesday. The restaurant will seat 220 inside and 155 more guests at tables outside and at the bar. It occupies the space off the hotel's lobby that once housed the Augustus Cafe. So what exactly is on the menu?

FOR THE last several weeks, Omri Aflalo has been helming the stoves at Citrus at Social as acting chef de cuisine, and now chef-owner Michel Richard is making it official. Aflalo takes up the post relinquished by former chef de cuisine Remi Lauvand, who departed abruptly last month. Aflalo, 28, cooked at Gary Danko and Aqua in San Francisco and previously had worked closely with Richard at Citronelle in Washington, D.C. He also worked at l'Essentiel in Chambery, France, and at Nero Bianco in Namur, Belgium.

Theirs was a love affair that began in the glow of a candlelit table. It was a white tablecloth and red wine evening. The food was refined, the service impeccable. The private room with the glass door was discreet, but the couple behind it could not go unnoticed. It's been a year and a half since that meal at Equinox, a chic and sleek restaurant a couple of blocks from the White House, in which Barack and Michelle Obama dined on greens with poached apples and pickled watermelon radish, pan-fried Rappahannock oysters, all-natural strip loin steak, crispy bananas and zabaglione gelato.

On the night of July 10, an armed robber killed transplanted Frenchman Andre Coffyn while he was closing up his Wilshire District bistro, "Michel Richard." While his murder was no more important, no less important, than any other killing that occurs in Los Angeles, it received considerable publicity and sparked rumors of a "conspiracy" against the French community, prompting the State Department to make an official inquiry on the matter to the Los Angeles Police Department.

By noon on a recent weekday, the next day's hickory-smoked Idaho trout orders are already cooling on metal racks, and the hundred or so salmon fillets cleaned that morning at Michel Cordon Bleu are a good halfway through their requisite five-hour smoke. Michel Blanchet, the 60-year-old owner of the small smoked seafood company, turns his attention to two employees who are hand-packing fillets into ice pack-filled Styrofoam boxes. After a lifetime working with some of the greatest chefs in the business, Blanchet is now supplying some of them with handcrafted smoked salmon, having carved out a signature business that counts clients nationwide because of his insistence on a personal, artistic touch instead of an assembly-line approach.

The wedding ceremony--simple and light-hearted--lasted about seven minutes. Eight hours later the wedding reception was still going strong, showing few signs of abatement. But anyone who knows ebullient Michel Richard, chef-partner at Citrus restaurant on Melrose Avenue, would not expect his wedding to Laurence Retourne to be anything but joyous celebration. Richard's fellow chefs turned out in force to provide a memorable wedding luncheon and reception.

Re: "America Killed Andre," Sept. 24, by Nikki Finke. "America" killed Andre Coffyn?! What nonsense! Must we be subjected to such nattering of yet another tiresome European emigre who came here, made a fortune, achieved a degree of trendy notoriety and--what else?--bad-mouths America? Quelle chutzpah! As an immigrant myself, I deplore Michel Richard's crass ingratitude. Given his own depiction of the privations of his childhood in France, Richard of all people should understand that for all its problems, this country remains a shining beacon for the rest of the world.

Theirs was a love affair that began in the glow of a candlelit table. It was a white tablecloth and red wine evening. The food was refined, the service impeccable. The private room with the glass door was discreet, but the couple behind it could not go unnoticed. It's been a year and a half since that meal at Equinox, a chic and sleek restaurant a couple of blocks from the White House, in which Barack and Michelle Obama dined on greens with poached apples and pickled watermelon radish, pan-fried Rappahannock oysters, all-natural strip loin steak, crispy bananas and zabaglione gelato.

By noon on a recent weekday, the next day's hickory-smoked Idaho trout orders are already cooling on metal racks, and the hundred or so salmon fillets cleaned that morning at Michel Cordon Bleu are a good halfway through their requisite five-hour smoke. Michel Blanchet, the 60-year-old owner of the small smoked seafood company, turns his attention to two employees who are hand-packing fillets into ice pack-filled Styrofoam boxes. After a lifetime working with some of the greatest chefs in the business, Blanchet is now supplying some of them with handcrafted smoked salmon, having carved out a signature business that counts clients nationwide because of his insistence on a personal, artistic touch instead of an assembly-line approach.

FOR THE last several weeks, Omri Aflalo has been helming the stoves at Citrus at Social as acting chef de cuisine, and now chef-owner Michel Richard is making it official. Aflalo takes up the post relinquished by former chef de cuisine Remi Lauvand, who departed abruptly last month. Aflalo, 28, cooked at Gary Danko and Aqua in San Francisco and previously had worked closely with Richard at Citronelle in Washington, D.C. He also worked at l'Essentiel in Chambery, France, and at Nero Bianco in Namur, Belgium.

CARPACCIO of "surf, turf and earth" is laid out on a square platter -- a fabulous mosaic of raw beef, tuna, salmon, scallop and roasted pepper, each round decorated with a wisp of frisee or a pretty pink grapefruit segment, the whole pulled together with a drizzle of basil and kumquat oils. Each bite is different, making a melody of flavors that dances across the palate. Another dish, listed as "Scallop scramble not 'Eggsactly' " is a play on texture that would intrigue any Chinese chef.

It's the old parlor game: "If you could eat dinner with anyone you wanted, whom would it be?" That may be fun for some, but for those who love to cook, wouldn't a more kitchen-centric twist be even better? Wouldn't you rather fantasize about whom you would like to get to help you fix that meal? Particularly at Thanksgiving, the most food-centered of American holidays, who doesn't dream about having a great cook drop by to lend a hand? Even the greatest chefs are not all created equal.

FIRST there was Citrus, Michel Richard's seminal French-California restaurant on Melrose. Then came Citronelle in Santa Barbara, and Citronelle in Washington, D.C. After Richard left California to move East several years ago, he focused his attention on Citronelle there, turning it into one of the capital's great restaurants. Meanwhile the Santa Barbara restaurant languished. But now, for the first time in 10 years, it has a new chef.

Delivered From L.A. Envy: Washington Post restaurant critic Phyllis C. Richman, in her May 10 review of Citronelle in Washington, writes: "No more Los Angeles envy. Now we have our very own superstar California chef, Michel Richard, who's left Tinseltown to move to Washington. . . . No longer is Citronelle an absentee-chef chain restaurant. Instead, it's the showcase of one of the best French chefs cooking in this country."

Your diet is on a roll and you want to keep it that way. So do your calorie-watching friends. It's your turn to throw a dinner party but you would hate to blow the diet. Can you get away with a dietetic menu? Certainly, if the food looks and tastes like a million bucks. So we asked a few of Los Angeles' top chefs whose health awareness matches their aesthetic sense for suggestions when planning a light party menu. Many of the ideas are based on existing items on the restaurants' menus.

It's the old parlor game: "If you could eat dinner with anyone you wanted, whom would it be?" That may be fun for some, but for those who love to cook, wouldn't a more kitchen-centric twist be even better? Wouldn't you rather fantasize about whom you would like to get to help you fix that meal? Particularly at Thanksgiving, the most food-centered of American holidays, who doesn't dream about having a great cook drop by to lend a hand? Even the greatest chefs are not all created equal.

Encino's Broadway Deli isn't really a deli at all, but a sort of one-stop marketing concept serving several of our favorite cuisines. Mark my words; forewarned is forearmed. The original Broadway Deli in Santa Monica probably worked because of sheer novelty.