French chef films quest for new flavors

NEW YORK - In the new documentary The Quest of Alain Ducasse, the esteemed French chef steps off a small plane in the middle of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. As he stands pondering the vast emptiness, a motorcycle suddenly appears, as if out of nowhere, carrying two men. The bemused chef chuckles: "There are customers everywhere."

For Ducasse, 61, that seems to be a fundamental truth and a driving force. The man oversees a veritable empire, with 27 restaurants across the globe, and 19 Michelin stars among them. From his first three-star triumph as a young upstart at the Louis XV in Monaco, to his haute-healthy, no-meat Paris eatery at the Plaza Athenee, to his recently opened restaurant at the opulent Palace of Versailles, where a special royal dinner costs 1,000 euros ($1,156), he seems on a nonstop mission to expand. In September, he'll open a new restaurant on an electric boat floating along the Seine.

There was a time when Ducasse, who grew up on a farm in southwestern France, spent most of his hours at the stove. Now, he seems to spend most of them in the air, crisscrossing the globe, tasting new menus and seeking out new flavors. In an interview at a New York gathering marking the release of the film, he politely deflected a question about how many frequent flyer miles he's amassed, but he did remark that he'd recently traveled for 20 hours to the mountains of Peru - just to taste a cup of coffee.