Patrick Dean Clark (March 17, 1955 – February 11, 1998) was an American chef. He won the 1994

James Beard Foundation The James Beard Foundation is a New York City-based national non-profit culinary arts organization named in honor of James Beard, a prolific food writer, teacher, and cookbook author, who was also known as the "Dean of American Cookery." The prog ...

award for "Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic Region" during his tenure at the Hay-Adams Hotel,

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

and also competed in the 1997

Iron Chef is a Japanese television cooking show produced by Fuji Television. The series, which premiered on October 10, 1993, was a stylized cook-off featuring guest chefs challenging one of the show's resident "Iron Chefs" in a timed cooking battle bui ...

. Clark is credited with having been the first chef in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

to mix fine-dining and bistro at The Odeon in

Tribeca Tribeca (), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Stree ...

, as well as also having been one of the first American chefs to apply French technique to growing American regional cuisine in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Early life

Clark was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, the son of Melvin, also a chef, and Idella. He was raised in Canarsie, a residential neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. He trained and worked in Britain and France, notably with three-star chef

Michel Guérard Michel Guérard (; born 27 March 1933) is a French chef, author, one of the founders of ''nouvelle cuisine'', and the inventor of ''cuisine minceur''. Early life and education Michel Guérard was born in 1933 in the Paris suburb of Vétheuil. At ...

Career

In 1988, he opened his own restaurant, Metro, on the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...

. It closed in 1990 and he went to work at Bice in

Beverly Hills Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California. A notable and historic suburb of Greater Los Angeles, it is in a wealthy area immediately southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. ...

. He soon returned to the east coast, taking over the kitchen at the

Hay–Adams Hotel The Hay–Adams is an historic luxury hotel opened in 1928, located at 800 16th Street NW in Washington, D.C. It south-fronts on Lafayette Square across from the White House. It sits on the former site of the connected 19th-century mansions wh ...

. In 1995, he returned to New York City to become

Executive chef A chef de cuisine (, French for ''head of kitchen'') or head chef is a chef that leads Lead is a chemical element with symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead or The Lead may also refer to: Animal handling * Leash, or lead * Lead (leg), ...

Tavern on the Green Tavern on the Green is an American cuisine restaurant in Central Park in Manhattan, New York City, near the intersection of Central Park West and West 66th Street on the Upper West Side. The restaurant, housed in a former sheepfold, has been o ...

. He has been hailed as "one of the greatest American culinary stars of the last half-century" Chef Anthony Bourdain describes the impression he made: "Patrick for sure impressed the hell out of us. He was kind of famous; he was big and black; most importantly he was ''American'', not some cheese-eating, surrender specialist Froggie. Patrick Clark, whether he would have appreciated it or not, was our home-town hero, our

Joe DiMaggio Joseph Paul DiMaggio (November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999), nicknamed "Joltin' Joe", "The Yankee Clipper" and "Joe D.", was an American baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yank ...

– a shining example that ''it could be done''."

Personal life

In 1979, he married Lynette. The couple had five children: two sons, Preston and Cameron, and three daughters, Aleia, Ashley, and Brooke. Preston is also an award-winning chef. At the time of his death, he and his family were living in

Plainsboro, New Jersey Plainsboro Township is a township in Middlesex County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The township is centrally located in the Raritan Valley region and is a part of the outer-ring suburbs of the New York metropolitan area even though it is ...

Death

Clark died of amyloidosis, a rare blood disease, on February 11, 1998, at the Princeton Medical Center in

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

. He was 42. His wife and their five children survived him.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Clark, Patrick 1955 births 1998 deaths African-American chefs American male chefs American restaurateurs People from Canarsie, Brooklyn People from Princeton, New Jersey 20th-century American businesspeople James Beard Foundation Award winners Iron Chef contestants Chefs from New York City Chefs from New Jersey Chefs from Washington, D.C. 20th-century African-American people Deaths from amyloidosis