Who

One of the top chefs in the city, Bouley is the owner of Bouley, Danube, Bouley Bakery and Market, and Bouley Upstairs.

Backstory

Contrary to popular belief, Bouley doesn't hail from France. But the Connecticut native and U.Conn/Cornell/Sorbonne dropout did hone his skills in Paris, working for star chefs like Joel Robuchon, Roger Vergé, Paul Bocuse, and Frédy Girardet. After moving to New York, Bouley labored briefly at La Côte Basque and Sirio Maccioni's Le Cirque, before gaining notice as the inaugural chef at Drew Nieporent's Montrachet in 1985. The partnership was short-lived: After repeated clashes with Nieporent, Bouley was given the boot—the parting was so nasty, they supposedly didn't speak for 17 years—and in 1987, he opened a Tribeca French restaurant of his own, Bouley. Although it started out as a two-star affair, Bouley evolved into a haute-cuisine powerhouse. But in 1996, Bouley shuttered the restaurant to pursue a grandiose scheme to brand himself via a Bouley cooking line and a Bouley culinary school. When those efforts stalled, he turned back to restaurants and opened Bouley Bakery, thus commencing a dizzying stretch in which he opened new restaurants and reconceived old ones. In 1999, he made over the once casual Bouley Bakery as a four-star restaurant and bowed the lavishly-decorated Austrian restaurant Danube. In 2002, the ever-indecisive Bouley reopened Bouley Bakery—which had closed after Sept. 11th—as Bouley. And three years after that, he resurrected Bouley Bakery in a nearby Tribeca locale, adding a café, Upstairs at Bouley Bakery, to its top floor.

Of note

Of late, the always brand-conscious Bouley has been pursuing empire-expansion with renewed vigor. It started in 2006 when he opened a "test kitchen" near his core restaurants in Tribeca to train staff and teach classes (cooking demonstrations run about $175 a head). He later partnered with the Ritz-Carlton to open David Bouley Evolution in Miami. Alas, his foray south didn't earn him much praise—"ingredients were not the problem, unless you count 'flavor' as an ingredient, because the kitchen seemed to have run out," sniped the New York Times—and the place was rebranded David Bouley at South Beach in 2007. Elsewhere, Bouley is prepping to open two health restaurants with nutritionist Oz Garcia, one near Lincoln Center and one at the St. Regis in Anguilla, as well as a robata/kaiseki restaurant called Brushstrokes with Japanese culinary master Yoshiki Tsuji; and he's just relocated his flagship Bouley to an airier, grander space on Duane Street.

Namedrop

Bouley boasts more high-profile alumni working in the industry than any other restaurateur in town. Prominent chefs who worked for Bouley early in their careers include Anita Lo, Terrance Brennan, Josh DeChellis, Kurt Gutenbrunner, Dan Barber, and Eric Ripert. Even his reservation podiums have some notable veterans: Amy Sacco, Yvonne Force Villareal, and Jack Lamb have all worked front-of-the-house jobs at his venues.

In person

Bouley's age is starting to show these days, but in his younger years, he was considered one of the city's chef hotties—People named him to its "50 Most Beautiful" list in 1994. Unlike many big New York chefs, though, Bouley has never been an attention-seeker interested in hamming it up on every morning show in town. That might be because his personality isn't exactly mediagenic—in fact, he has a reputation as something of a nut. Dan Barber once recounted in the Times that Bouley scolded him for failing to literally "start a conversation" with a mackerel he was cooking.

Legal file

Bouley occasionally finds himself in legal tangles, as when he sparred with former Russian Tea Room partner Warner LeRoy in the 1990s. After the two dissolved their partnership, LeRoy sued Bouley, claiming he'd misappropriated funds from Bouley Bakery and hadn't shared the profits from the restaurant. More recently, Bouley's insurance company sued him after he claimed $2.2 million in Sept. 11th-related damages but had failed to report that he'd made $5.3 million charging the Red Cross for food.

Personal

Having been involved with Bernadette Peters in the '90s, Bouley married fellow Tribeca booster Nicole Bartelme—she helped put together the original Tribeca Film Festival—in 2006. The wedding, held at various chateaus in the Loire Valley, involved a "five-day moveable feast," a cooking staff of more than 20, and specialty foods from around the world. (The heart of palm was hand-delivered from Hawaii, while a chef from Kyoto carried a special suitcase filled with fresh wasabi.) In April 2007, Bouley bought a three-bedroom condo for $3.15 million in the same building as his reincarnation of Bouley. He also has a house in Kent, Conn.