The Seafood Restaurant, opened in 1975, is now just one small part of the culinary empire he has built up over the last 30 years.

Like the seamstress in a little atelier whose ability with a needle turned her talent into a clothing empire, these chefs have parlayed their signature restaurants into culinary empires.

Many are building culinary empires that include television programs, cookbooks, high-profile restaurants and merchandise.

If all of Italy is pizza land, it is also a culinary empire with loyal provinces around the globe.

When he closed the initial Bouley in 1996, his reason and goal were to work on a projected culinary empire: a Bouley at Home store; a culinary research laboratory; a cooking school.

His ambitions are boundless, and his complex, ever-changing schemes to establish a personal culinary empire make him one of the more attention-getting and baffling figures on the restaurant scene.

In that case Mexican is the new Japanese, and any way you slice it, Japanese has been cast as a faded culinary empire, at least here in New York.

Mr. LeRoy is already backing David Bouley and the culinary empire he is building at West Broadway and Duane Street.

Today, as a senior player in a culinary empire that employs nearly 900 cooks at restaurants including Lutece and Bryant Park Grill, Mr. Waxman tries to spread this philosophy.

Conrad Gallagher came to New York hoping to establish a beachhead for his culinary empire and escape from an unpleasant legal situation at home.