Michel Richard

Coming Up

Pastry set the terms early for Michel Richard’s work: precision, repetition, and the discipline to make finish look easy. As an apprentice pâtissier at A hotel restaurant in Reims, France, he entered the trade through the exacting side of French kitchen culture. The move to cook at French Army in France, then to pastry chef at French Pastry Shop at La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, widened the frame without loosening the standard. Those years carried the same method across different rooms, building range while keeping technique at the center. Ownership came next, and with it a stronger public shape. In 1977, Michel Richard became owner at Michel Richard's Pastry Shop in Los Angeles, California, United States, placing pastry in a setting where it could carry the name and the point of view. From 1986–1997, he was owner at Citrus in West Hollywood, California, United States, where the cooking became linked to a style that joined French rigor with a lighter contemporary register. The line from pastry shop to restaurant ownership shows a chef working the same tools at larger scale. The Citronelle years extended that model across multiple addresses: owner at Citronelle in Santa Barbara, California, United States (from 1989), owner at Citronelle in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., United States (from 1993), and owner at Michel Richard Citronelle in Washington, D.C., United States (1998–2012). Later, he served as chef at Central Michel Richard in Washington, D.C., United States (2007–2016), and as owner at Restaurant and bakery at the New York Palace hotel in New York City, New York, United States (2013–2014). The sequence shows a career built on moving a defined hand from city to city, keeping the work legible even as the rooms changed.

Where They Are Now

At Citronelle, he made the lobster begula pasta, his most famous recipe, and served it in a caviar tin so it looked like a can of fish eggs. The dish treats presentation as part of the craft, using the container to set up the reading before the first bite. He also created the egg-ceptional dish there, an eggshell made using white chocolate and filled with lemon meringue yolk. The joke is in the name, but the value is in the controlled illusion: something that reads one way, then lands another way when cut open. Later, he said, "I’ve served our chocolate bar dessert in every restaurant of mine." That continuity matters. Across different addresses, he returned to a small set of signatures and kept refining them until they could travel.

Signature

Michel Richard’s signature dishes include lobster “begula” pasta, egg-ceptional dish, and chocolate bar dessert. Read together, they show a kitchen where presentation is part of the recipe, humor is built into the naming, and a dessert can become so fixed in the line-up that it follows the chef from one restaurant to the next.

In Their Words “I’ve served our chocolate bar dessert in every restaurant of mine.”