Bernard Ros, the Good Old Boy Headhunter and Restaurateur

The Times runs a piece on Bernard Ros, the owner of the Madison Avenue French bistro Meli Melo and a defacto headhunter for practically every French restaurant in town. For the last 40 years, the man has been linking out of work chefs with restaurants in need, making connections from MePa to Queens, Maryland to Connecticut. No resumes are in play, but he and his associates contend he doesn't recommend chefs who are lousy, “he knows how good or how bad you are and places you where you belong." In one case he hooks up a former Waldorf-Astoria chef with a brasserie in Astoria, "The brasserie needed a volume guy, and Paul’s a big guy who can do big numbers," and in another he places a whole slew of line cooks at the shuttered Gavroche.

Point is, if you work at a French place and you don't know this guy, you might want to get on that.
· For Jobless Chefs, a Helping Hand [NYT]
[Robin Wright/NYT]