Irish chefs do it better

We were a little surprised but nonetheless impressed to see the New York Times report today on a noisy but ultimately inconsequential Dublin story from yesterday, namely the acquittal of celebrity chef Conrad Gallagher of the theft of three paintings from the hotel within which his Dublin restaurant was located, and the fraudulent sale of one of the pictures. The NYT put the story in their metro section, reflecting the fact that Gallagher was seeking to relaunch his career in Manhattan. Conrad seems to have dealt with his ordeal pretty well, and for someone facing such apparently incriminating evidence, the same roguish charm that helped his business likely endeared him to the jury as well. He does however strike us as being a bit optimistic about his ability to return to the US -- it's a post 9-11 world for immigrants, and he was arrested on an Irish extradition warrant, spent a night in a Brooklyn jail, and was deported. That'll make for an interesting visa application.

But anyway, visa problems or not, Conrad is in much better shape that some of his celebrity chef counterparts in other countries. He's fairly sane, and alive. French culinary society seemed to take weeks to get over the suicide of chef Bernard Loiseau, and there's an ongoing inquest in London into the death of aspiring celebrity chef David Dempsey, who didn't survive a cocaine-fuelled rampage in Chelsea. A very English verdict of death by misadventure seems inevitable. It's perhaps too facile to speculate whether it's something about the business that especially lends itself to such extreme behaviour.