News

Soul Kitchen

Meet Michael Ruhlman, the celebrity chef without a restaurant.

By Elaine T. Cicora 

Michael Ruhlman leans back in a chair in his Cleveland Heights kitchen, a Marlboro Light in one hand and a glass of Laphroaig in the other. For once, the lanky 43-year-old author and chef seems at ease. He's just wooed a first-time visitor with an indulgent homemade meal, and he is obviously relishing the break from his omnipresent deadlines to talk about food and drink for a while. It's about as mellow a midday hiatus as he can imagine, complete with flames dancing in the fireplace and a Chet Baker CD playing softly in the background. Perhaps best of all, it's his excuse to chill, without the nagging fear that he is slacking. The luscious duck and pork belly he prepared for lunch was research, he assures us, and if all goes as planned, the recipes and techniques will soon find their way into a book on sous vide, the art of cooking with, of all things, vacuum-sealed bags.

If it's true that a man makes his own good luck, Ruhlman isn't about to be caught napping, and so far, it's obvious that his hard work, relentless self-discipline, and innate perfectionism have yielded success beyond any reasonable expectations. Less than 10 years after he first stumbled into the food-writing biz --with his candid first-person account of his education at New York's prestigious Culinary Institute of America (1997's The Making of a Chef) -- Ruhlman is providing a handsome lifestyle for his wife and two young children. He's also a fine chef, both by natural inclination and by virtue of his CIA training. He may, in fact, be one of the city's best -- but no way is he going to cook for you. Ruhlman is content to create at his home stove; the closest you will come to tasting his artistry are the words he serves up in his books.

"Michael is easily one of the most respected writers on the subject of food and chefs in America, particularly within the industry," says Anthony Bourdain, a nationally known chef, author, and television personality who is among Ruhlman's closest friends. "He's probably the very best observer and chronicler of the lives of chefs and of the peculiar subculture that is the restaurant business."

But Ruhlman is more than that; he enjoys a life that most foodies would gladly trade their Cuisinarts to taste. He's been confidant and housemate of Thomas Keller, the much honored chef-owner of Napa Valley's French Laundry restaurant. He's tooled around the Nevada desert in an El Dorado convertible with Bourdain. And when Eric Ripert, chef and co-owner of Manhattan's four-star Le Bernardin, wanted someone to document his search for his inner cook, Ruhlman was his go-to guy. His work has boosted him into the elite world of national celebrity chefs, giving him a connection to the modern American food scene that no other Clevelander can claim.

And it doesn't hurt that Ruhlman is easy on the eyes. Model handsome and slimmer than his publicity photos make him out to be, the 6-foot-4-inch blond pads about his kitchen in bare feet, long legs wrapped in faded jeans, tanned arms sticking out of a rumpled Ralph Lauren Oxford almost as blue as his eyes. It'd be no surprise to find Ruhlman at least a little arrogant and self-centered. On the contrary, he is almost humble, even within the cocoon of his own comfortable home, an expansive 1901 beauty that he has renovated from attic to basement (and about which he's written a book, the 2005 memoir House).

Chalk it up, maybe, to the inherent effects of being an only child. Or perhaps the years of adhering to a solitary writing schedule have dulled his capacity for self-promotion. Whatever the reasons, though, while Ruhlman is gracious and polite, he's a strange amalgam of shyness and professorial solemnity, and almost twitchy around outsiders. He answers questions briefly, often with self-deprecating humor, and he professes constant amazement that anyone would want to know any more about him than they can read on one of his dust jackets.

"What are you going to say about me?" he asks repeatedly. "Just don't bore anyone."

Happily, Ruhlman's culinary know-how has been placed in the service of several lunchtime interviews, which he has agreed to host; for our second meeting, he's roasting a chicken, which he will serve with mashed potatoes and sautéed spinach. Lofty credentials notwithstanding, Ruhlman admits that he never learned how to truss a fowl, and his determined efforts to corral this one's errant appendages and close her gaping orifices are beginning to resemble something from a snuff flick. His long, slender fingers flutter over the chicken's pale skin seemingly at random, trailing kitchen string around legs and wings, until at last the bird is bound to his satisfaction. "Trussing isn't really essential," he sniffs as he finally slides the chicken into the blazing Viking oven. "It's just that an untrussed bird looks sloppy, like a slatternly woman."

The peculiar simile still hangs in the air as Ruhlman turns to his Boos cutting board and begins transforming garlic cloves into the finest possible dice for later use in the chicken au jus. His hands are trembling violently.

Ask Ruhlman to pinpoint the origins of his passion, and the conversation quickly turns to his days at Duke University and his friend and mentor, Reynolds Price. A noted novelist, poet, playwright, and longtime professor of English, Price first encountered Ruhlman in the early 1980s, when the sophomore signed up for his creative writing class.

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
Next Page »