Last night, at dinner I was reminiscing about how lucky I’ve been to work with so many extraordinary chefs.  Of course, I worked with Julia Child (who wasn’t a chef and who would correct anyone who called her one; this despite the fact that the name of her long-running television series was The French Chef), but I also worked with, among others, Daniel Boulud and Jean-Georges Vongerichten on the savory side, and on the sweet side, Pierre Herme, Johnny Iuzzini and Lionel Poilane.  And so I think I know a little about what makes chefs great.  There’s their talent, that’s almost a given; there’s their energy – they’re built with super-chargers that aren’t standard equipment among us ordinary mortals; there’s their skill at organization and production (not a glam quality, but a really important one); and there’s their intelligence, a kind of intelligence that includes creativity, but that also includes the ability to express, share, explain that creativity and, in doing that, inspire and teach others.

The chefs in my personal pantheon of culinary heroes have these qualities, and so does Hugues Pouget, the pastry magician in Paris’s newest luxe patisserie, Hugo&Victor.

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