Who

Tourondel is the chef and owner of the rapidly multiplying BLT chain of eateries: BLT Steak, BLT Prime, BLT Fish, BLT Burger, and BLT Market.

Backstory

Born and raised in rural France, Tourondel attended culinary school in his native country and cooked his way through a stint in the French army, serving as chef to an admiral. Following a turn serving up food at the London gentleman's club Boodles, he headed to New York, where he held down various jobs at restaurants and catering companies, later returning to France to train under superchefs Jacques Maxim and Claude Troisgros. In the mid-1990s, Troisgros dispatched him to the U.S. to oversee things at his Gramercy restaurant C.T. He earned rave reviews but soon left Troisgros's employ to work as head chef of Las Vegas's Palace Court. (He earned a Best New Chef nod from Food & Wine in 1998.) A year later, Tourondel returned to New York to man the stove at the three-star Upper East Side seafood spot Cello. After the restaurant was shuttered, he spent a year traveling the world, then in 2004 he opened BLT Steak on 57th Street.

Of note

As you might have guessed, the letters have nothing to do with the sandwich: B is for Bistro, L is for Laurent, and T is for Tourondel. Yet at the rate he's expanding, it's perfectly conceivable there will soon be a BLT BLT. In 2006, he opened BLT Burger, which raised eyebrows with its audaciously priced $62 Kobe burger. ("Why one would turn the Maybach of meat into hamburgers is beyond me," wrote Peter Meehan in the Times.) In 2007, he launched BLT Market, his most upscale venture to date, on the ground floor of the Ritz-Carlton on Central Park South. He's now in the process of exporting BLT Steak to Washington D.C., Las Vegas, and San Juan.

In print

In 2004, Tourondel published a seafood cookbook, Go Fish. Pal Daniel Boulud wrote the book's foreword.

Personal

A bachelor, Tourondel lives on East 108th Street. He occasionally commutes to his eateries on his vintage 1958 Vespa.