In September 1991, chefs Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Todd English looked unstoppable. English had just been named the James Beard Rising Chef of the Year after leading his restaurant Olives in Charleston, Mass., to two years of wide acclaim. Jean-Georges had just opened his first solo restaurant, JoJo, a bistro on New York’s Upper East Side, after over four years as the chef of Lafayette, where he’d earned a rave four-star review from the New York Times at the age of 31. JoJo, meanwhile, was quickly becoming a smash hit. Times restaurant critic Bryan Miller said that the dining room was so packed that it often evoked “Epcot Center during spring break,” and declared the food, light on cream and butter, “cooking for the ’90s.” They were young, good-looking, prodigiously talented chefs cooking in a country that was just starting to grow taste buds — why would anyone even want to stop them?
Twenty years later, they have become household names, received further accolades and thickened their wallets considerably. Jean-Georges now owns 27 restaurants, and English owns 20. Dishes they’ve invented — Jean-Georges’s molten chocolate cake and foie gras crème brûlée, English’s fig-prosciutto pizza — have become industry staples. They’ve made inroads to becoming a part of the mainstream, each releasing guides to home cooking this fall, and being featured in People magazine. They are celebrities and restaurateurs, rich and famous – but are they still chefs?