CHEF WILL GOLDFARB, Trinity '97, strides into the red-brick, exposed-beams interior of Chocolat Michel Cluizel and launches a hearty "Bongiorno!" at the bartender.
The greeting seems too loud for the space, an upscale chocolate shop in downtown Manhattan. Ignore the sleek bar in the corner and it's like walking into a Tiffany's where all the precious metal has been replaced by rows of rich chocolate. Neatly stacked bon bons are kept under glass, and watchful sales girls in black dresses hover or tie pink bows onto jars of chocolate pearls. You almost expect the packaging to be robin's egg blue with a big white bow.
The bartender, like most of the staff in the store, greets Goldfarb warmly and soon he's settled into a corner table with a glass of sparkling water. As he waits for "Mikey"-that would be Michel Cluizel, the famed Parisian chocolatier- to arrive, he opens his laptop and clicks on a new post in New York magazine's restaurant blog, Grub Street. The entry gushes about rumors that Cluizel has a collaboration in the works with "none other than Will Goldfarb, Grub Street 'It' boy and master of a million projects" and warns readers to brace themselves.
Goldfarb confirms that he is here to meet Cluizel about a new project but remains vague on details for the "dessert concept," revealing only that they have already worked on a menu for drinks and pastries. He's unfazed by the media attention, which has been piling on since he opened Room4Dessert that served up deconstructions of dessert before it temporarily closed in the summer. Nominally a pastry chef, Goldfarb constructs foams, gels and ice cream that incorporates flavors like basil, wasabi root and spare rib. The proverbial (dehydrated, infused, gelatinized?) cherry on top was a six-page profile last June in The New Yorker.
"Literally, I did everything, did every magazine, every newspaper, every TV show, every country in the world. We do an interview or photo shoot a day on average for the last two years," he says. "I couldn't have had a better year than I did last year in terms of break-out as a big star. No possible way."
So how did Goldfarb go from being a busboy at Parizade's Cafe to culinary 'It' boy in 10 years? And more importantly, how did he escape the narrowly defined parameters of Duke success to cook his way across Europe, survive being skewered by New York restaurant critics and come out the other side with his own restaurant?
A NATIVE OF Long Island, Goldfarb came to Durham in the fall of 1993 to a school that he says is probably "exactly the same" as it is now.
"I didn't really feel like doing a lot of work in college, and Duke was a good place for that. It was pretty easy. My main motivation for going there was the weather and the sort of,"-he pauses, before settling on a euphemism-"free spirit, which changed a lot while I was there."
Between partying and being bored with his history classes, Goldfarb turned to the local restaurant scene to indulge his interest in food.
"I worked in every restaurant around Durham, pretty much. I was a busboy at Parizade's-is that still there? I liked it. I worked at Nana's as a busboy. When Pop's was open I was a host there. I worked at Vinnie's Steakhouse. I used to learn about wine at Foster's. Great wine program, I used to go there and buy a ton of wine," he says, reeling off the names of local establishments. "My senior year, I was working at like three of them at one time because I had like, four independent studies. It was just a joke."
Despite his laidback attitude toward academics, Goldfarb's LSAT score was high enough to get him into University of Southern California Law School and on the wait list at New York University School of Law, one of the best in the country. He deferred admission, however, and moved to Paris instead of heading to the sunny California coast. The plan was to live in Europe for a year before getting back on track toward becoming an intellectual property lawyer and then later branching out as a restauranteur around the age of 40.
While enrolled in an expedited pastry program at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and working in a bistro and a pastry shop on the side, Goldfarb realized nearly a year after graduation that he was attracted to "the precision of pastry" and had no desire to head back to the classroom. He called the dean of admissions at USC Law and found a new job in Paris.
"I didn't want to come back. It was just a good life, and I didn't want to be in school," he says. "The good news is, if I'd actually gone to class at Duke I probably would've gotten into Harvard, and then I wouldn't have deferred, and I'd be a lawyer right now."
Goldfarb spent the next few years traipsing from the south of France to Florence, working as a private chef and in a famed Italian trattoria. He partied with friends from Duke who had fled to Europe for their semesters abroad and eventually found his way to Catalonia, Spain and El Bulli, the three-Michelin-star restaurant considered one of the best in the world.
In his two years working at El Bulli, Goldfarb studied under Ferran and Albert Adria, pioneers on the cutting edge of cuisine who took chemicals out of the lab and into the kitchen. Upon returning to New York City in 2001, he ushered in radical dessert menus at a series of high-profile restaurants and was met with a series of bad reviews.
Then Goldfarb escaped the pressure of the New York food scene and spent a summer living out of a trailer and cooking in a Maine country inn. He worked at Morimoto in Philadelphia before returning to New York in 2004.
"New York is always a rough ride. I was famous eight years ago and then not famous and then gone, then not famous. Now I'm famous and closed," he says. "The fame isn't up to me to decide, which is stressful when you have a child. Your bills don't change because you're less famous."
FOR A CHEF whose food is praised for its creativity and ingenuity, Goldfarb can seem oddly dispassionate when talking about cooking. His dream is to be financially secure enough to live on the Italian coast with his wife and three-year-old daughter. He says he wouldn't miss cooking.
Although Room4Dessert is currently shuttered as Goldfarb looks for a bigger location to re-open, he seemingly has all ten of his fingers in other pies. He sells Willpowder, a line of ingredients that includes xantham gum, agar agar and spray-dried coconut, for the ambitious home cook. Picknick is a chain of environmentally friendly pavilions he opened this summer that began serving salads, sandwiches and smoothies out of Battery Park but could expand as far as South Beach. He also has a book with a publisher and an agent.
In an age when connections are forged with celebrity chefs through television screens rather than taste buds, Goldfarb has his eye on the branding prize and says he would consider a Food Network show. People who criticize chefs for "selling out" on television or shilling a line of knives are simply jealous of success, he says.
"Food Network's not my first choice, but whatever pays the mortgage. [Esteemed American chef] Thomas Keller has his own plateware. The difference is he's managed to brand himself at an elite level, whereas Rachael Ray doesn't really have anything to do with cooking at all.. You're an idiot if you don't look at someone like that and say, 'Wow, that's a successful person, I want to learn something from her.' But that doesn't mean you want to emulate their particular style of cooking," he says. "Thomas Keller is certainly more of a role model than Rachael Ray. There is a difference between a brand and being perceived as a luxury or quality brand."
Goldfarb says that if he can transform his buzz into bucks, obtaining both financial and marketing success, he'll have done his part to change the "dull" New York food scene. But even now, he's happy with his accomplishments.
"I'm happy in my life with my wife and my baby and my career. I think for what I've done I'm hugely successful by my own standards. Maybe not by society or financial standards, but for myself."
Advice to soon-to-be college graduates who also don't want to be doctors or lawyers or bankers?
"Do what makes you happy and be persistent and don't give up," he says. "A lot of people think because it's a dream you're not supposed to work for it, but I don't think that's the case-I think it's still a job, and I think it's still hard. It's harder. You have the pressure of what you've chosen, what you want to do, and you have to make it work."
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