(Vatche Benguian is no longer chef at the Roof Terrace Restaurant) 

To diners who've been eating around town for the past three decades, Vatche Benguian's name might be familiar. Remember La Bagatelle? Benguian was in the kitchen. La Colline?  Benguian was chef and partner. You ate at Gerard's Place? Benguian was in the kitchen with Gerard Pangaud. You've dined at Le Mistral, Le Tire Bouchon, the Historic Georgetown Club and Melrose? Benguian has cooked for you. You relished the pates, rillettes, and charcuterie at The Blue Duck Tavern? Benguian was the chef charcutier, teaching the kitchen how to make them.

Back in high school, it's not what he intended. His final year he decided he was going to be a professional footballer. He banked on getting a scholarship in the game at Michigan State where he planned to study business administration. But before he graduated high school, he broke his leg. "And my doctor tells me, no more professional sport."

His family is from Khartoum in Sudan. It was forced to leave when the country was decimated by a coup d'état. They went first to Canada, where his father had a sister in Montreal, then two weeks later found themselves in Michigan, at the invitation of Benguian's godmother. It was 1968 and Benguian was 11.

While the end of his football aspirations came as a bitter blow, he did discover an alternative. He'd enrolled in a food service program in his last year. He'd done well at school, with enough credits accumulated that he had time on his hands. "I went home to watch Julia Childs and Jacques Pepin on TV and imitate the recipes." And he'd worked as helper to a chef, doing basic jobs like de-veining shrimp. "Slowly, slowly" - it's a phrase he uses frequently - "I began to like that bit." So he planned to go to Lausanne's Hotel School. But a teacher gave him some sound advice. "He was excellent. He guided me to go to the Culinary Institute of America. He said, learn the American system first. Then, if you still want, go to Europe."

At the CIA Benguian met the man he calls his "second father", Eugene Bernard. "He was a very incredible, classic French chef, and really the one who guided my career." Bernard found Benguian his first job, at New York's Cote Basque. When Benguian told him he wasn't happy in the Big Apple, Bernard arranged for him to meet Robert Greault, the man behind Bagatelle, on K Street back in 1979.

A place in Greault’s kitchen would draw 200 applicants. Fellow graduates with Benguian were Robert Weidmaier, Michel Richard and Jeff Buben. Benguian went from kitchen to kitchen, determined to hone his skills. "I wouldn't stick more than six months if I didn't learn." Contacts were easier to establish then, with chefs recommending their staff to other chefs when they were ready to take the next step up the ladder. "Now it's by email, and you don't know who you are sending it to."

He became a partner with Robert Greault at La Colline for almost 20 years until the legendary Capitol Hill restaurant closed. Beguian calls it his second home. On some days, between breakfast, lunch and dinner, they cooked 700 covers.

Now at the Kennedy Center's Roof Terrace Restaurant, Benguian is finding the pace more relaxing than he's ever experienced and he's glad to sit back and ruminate on the changes he's seen in the capital.

In the late '70s, early '80s, says Benguian, DC's French restaurants were few but very good. Bagatelle gave him the chance to hone his classic French technique.

"That for me is what's missing for the new generation [of DC chefs]. They aren't learning that. They don't know how to apply certain cooking methods, techniques that were very good for us."

He's full of admiration for what his fellow Bagatelle alums are achieving. "Robert Weidmaier and Michel Richard are trying to keep the fire alive with classic French food, but modern flavors. Slowly, slowly, they're bringing back the old style, but presenting it in a modern version."

He believes that the front-of-house in Washington's restaurants could benefit from a return to the "old style", too. "Now everything must be beautiful, lined up on the plate. New chemistry is imitating flavors. Dining rooms are missing the closeness with the customer of the old style - the training of dining room people to fillet fish at the tableside, carve meat tableside. It's a pleasure for the customer to watch while they are eating their meal."

He'd like to see a return to that more personal, more professional service. "In a lot of places management have catered to help a waiter do the work without making mistakes. They do preventative maintenance. But they're never going to learn that way." He compares becoming a good waiter to learning to be a doctor. "You have to learn the old techniques as well as the new. You have to know with food what happened in the old times and apply it in a modern way. All the chefs doing modern cuisine, like Bobby Flay, are classically trained. At least we can all say we learned. Today's generation? There's a muddy space."

Still, professional cooking is an unbelievable field to be in, he says. "Every day is a learning day." But it's a tough life if you have a family. "You want a family life, but you look forward to going in every morning, and pleasing the customer, teaching the staff." At home he has over 600 cookbooks which he reads avidly for recipes he can interprete with his own twist.

One day he'd like to have his own restaurant, a place for 120 diners with a small room for parties and cook brasserie food in a modern fashion. No main course would cost more than $25. He'd serve the kind of food he likes to eat himself. "French comfort food. Braised items, like beef short ribs and daubes, and pasta. I like different rice dishes. And a lot of legumes. We used to eat a lot of fava beans. There was one dish we used to have for breakfast every morning - foules medames." He sighs. "Sudan is too politically unstable to go back." Spain is a country he'd like to visit. When he was young the family traveled extensively with his father who had an import-export business. "When school closed, we traveled for three months. We started in the Port of Alexandria then went to Lebanon and on to Greece, then from the south of Italy take the train up to Milan, head up to Switzerland to Geneva and through Germany to Hamburg. We'd cut across to France and end up in London. For some reason I missed Spain. It's becoming a culinary mecca."

This is a great time in his life, he says. "At my first job I was in at 9 in the morning till
10 at night. Here it's like a godsend for the hours. Only one sitting at dinner. And I don't have lunch to worry about. For 30 years you've been working so hard. There was no time to take a good vacation, you had to sacrifice things. It's very nice to be here."

And very nice, he says, when his old customers learn where he is and come to seek him out.

The Roof Terrace Restaurant is located in The Kennedy Center, 2700 F St NW, 202 416 8561. Dinner options are a three-course Prix Fixe menu for $39 and an A La Carte menu, with main courses from $22 to $38.

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