|  | Michael Smith Michael Smith, 41, was initiated into the restaurant business at an early age. His mother, a restaurant manager, familiarized him with the daily grind of the kitchen-from peeling potatoes and shrimp to cleaning bathrooms and washing dishes-as the family moved from town to town after Michael’s birth in Gettysburg, South Dakota. After earning a degree in Psychology at the University of Southern Colorado, Michael began work at Chateau Pyrenees, a French restaurant in Denver, where he studied under Jean-Pierre Lelievre and, later, Georges Mavro. In 1985, he went to the South of France to work at Le Presqu’ile for two years. (He was unaware that his future wife and partner was nearby, earning her wings as a chef as well.) Michael returned to Chicago in 1987 to work at Charlie Trotter’s. There he met Debbie Gold, with whom he returned to France in 1989 to be share the Executive Chef title at L’Albion. Upon his return to Chicago in 1991, he worked at Carlos’ in Highland Park and then at Gordon until 1994. |
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