Alain Ducasse

French chef and restaurateur who opened the most expensive restaurant in New York City in June 2000. At the Essex House, dinner for two can easily exceed $500 - if you add a fine wine. The tables are not "turned over" during the evening, but the customer buys not only elegance and luxury, but leisure to spend the evening being pampered. His restaurant Alain Ducasse in Paris and Le Louis XV in Monte Carlo are the twin bastions of taste upon which Ducasse bases his empire, both holding three-star ratings from France's benchmark Michelin guidebook. He also has one-star restaurants in Paris and Monaco, a chain of eateries as far away as Tokyo called Spoon Food & Wine, a kitchenware line and a string of cookbooks, all of which brought in a combined $30 million in 1999. Ducasse was raised on a family farm in southwestern France where his parents raised ducks and geese for foie gras and his grandmother cooked wonderful country food. Alain became an apprentice in professional kitchens and by the age of 27, a two-star chef. That year, 1984, he was traveling in a small plane that crashed in the Alpine mountains; he was the only one of six aboard to survive. It took 15 operations to repair his leg, back and eye. After his recovery, he said that he no longer feared taking risks, and he set out to win top honors in his field. Ducasse married and divorced and has a teen-age daughter, Audrey. In 1995 he met a 22-year-old student, Gwenaelle Gueguen at the Paris airport before a flight and invited her for coffee. He made her his translator, personal assistant and girlfriend. When not wearing his chef's hat and rigorously training his staff, Ducasse favors hand-made suits and exploring world haute cuisine himself. Link to Wikipedia biography