Michel Richard, D.C. chef, dies at 68

The D.C. restaurant scene can aptly be split into two distinct eras — before Michel Richard and after Michel Richard.

The French-born chef who revolutionized the District’s food scene died Saturday at the age of 68 from complications of a stroke.

Mr. Richard, who moved to the D.C. area in the early 1990s is survived by his wife, Laurence Retourne, and five sons and a daughter.

With the opening of Georgetown’s Citronelle in 1993, Mr. Richard took a city primarily known for fat-cat steak joints and power lunches and helped transform it into a dining destination that, in recent years, has rivaled such stalwarts as Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Locally, Mr. Richard was considered an innovator and a genius.

“Judging by his food alone, he could have been an architect, a poet or another Thomas Edison,” Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema said.

Chef Robert Wiedmaier, who owns the highly regarded Brasserie Beck, Marcel’s and other D.C. restaurants, said Mr. Richard could do things that other chefs couldn’t even dream of.

He said Mr. Richard was always essentially a pastry chef, which gave him a unique perspective in the kitchen. Pastry chefs are known for being precise in their recipes and measurements. Their innovation often comes in preparation. Savory chefs are more prone to improvisation, thinking more quickly on their feet.

“Deep down inside of his heart, he was a pastry chef. He blew down the walls with his unique ability to play pastry chef and [savory] chef,” Mr. Wiedmaier said. “His technique was so beyond what other people could do. He taught a lot of young chefs a lot of cool techniques that they’ll be using for the rest of their lives.”

In a tribute to the chef in The Washington Post, Mr. Sietsema wrote that Mr. Richard loved to have fun with food.

“The tricks in his seemingly bottomless bag included ’pasta’ coaxed from onion and ’caviar’ created with Israeli couscous and squid ink,” he wrote. “December brought tiny snowmen shaped from balls of meringue and filled with vanilla ice cream.”

Bryan Voltaggio, runner-up on the sixth season of Bravo’s cooking competition show “Top Chef,” said Mr. Richard was a joy to be around.

“Very sad to find out this morning about Michel Richard, a great chef and friend. He always could fill a room with laughter. He will be missed,” said Mr. Voltaggio, who runs several highly rated local restaurants, including Volt.

Mr. Richard mingled with others in the D.C. food scene and brought joy to those in the business.

Greg Boyd, who has spent decades catering private events in the District, said Mr. Richard often cracked jokes and made fun when other chefs were under stress.

Mr. Boyd helped organize a wine tasting featuring well-known chefs including Patrick O’Connell of The Inn at Little Washington, one of the region’s most lauded restaurants. The kitchen was in a tent on a basketball court on the grounds of a large home. Mr. Richard was in charge of one of the courses, and he chose a dish featuring duck.

“[Mr. Richard] kept walking around the kitchen quacking while all the other chefs looked like they were going to cry,” Mr. Boyd said. “The takeaway is that [Mr. Richard] was having a blast. Afterward, we sat around drinking Chateau d’Yquem into the wee hours.”

Mr. Richard was born in Pabu, France, on March 7, 1948. He took to the kitchen early and became an apprentice at age 14 at a hotel bakery in Reims.

After a stint as a cook in the French army to fulfill his military service obligation, Mr. Richard was given a job by French patissier Gaston Lenotre, who in 1974 sent the young chef to New York to open the bakery Chateau France.

After that, Mr. Richard traveled around the United States and operated a bakery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, before opening his first pastry shop in Los Angeles in 1977. The chef made his mark when he opened his first savory restaurant called Citrus in Los Angeles in 1986.

In 1994, Mr. Richard opened a Citronelle location in the District, where he decided to make his home base after more than a decade in California. That restaurant — and his subsequent eatery Central — vaulted the D.C. food scene into the national spotlight.

A bevy of internationally recognized chefs and food writers spoke passionately about Mr. Richard, showing his reach went well beyond the D.C. food scene where he was so beloved.

“I’m saddened by the loss of a great chef, Michel Richard. He will be missed,” Emeril Legasse wrote on Twitter.

Thomas Keller, owner of the The French Laundry in Yountville, California, lauded Mr. Richard’s warm spirit.

“I am completely saddened by the news of a great chef & close friend’s passing. Michel Richard will be remembered with love & admiration,” he said on Twitter.

Ruth Reichl, who wrote for The New York Times and edited Gourmet magazine, said Mr. Richard will be remembered as one of the great chefs in America. “There was nobody who had more fun in the kitchen,” she tweeted.

But for all that international acclaim, Mr. Richard will be remembered in the District as one of the few chefs who took a chance on a fledgling food scene. The best in the city now stand on the shoulders of chefs such as Mr. Richard and Jean-Louis Palladin, the charismatic former head chef of the Watergate Hotel’s Jean-Louis Restaurant, who died in 2001.

“Michel loved being in the kitchen,” Mr. Wiedmaier said. “He’s up there with Jean-Louis cooking together.”