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Scott grew up in what he calls a 'housing development - a project, really', unlike me, who grew up in a leafy green wonderland of brick colonial homes, distant lawn-mowers, backyard croquet games, gurgling goldfish ponds and Cheever-esque cocktail parties. Scott went to Brook line High, a public school where the emphasis seems to have been on technical skills; they had a culinary program and a restaurant open to the public. I went to private school, a tweedy institution where kids wore Brooks Brothers jackets with the school seal and Latin motto (Veritas fortissimo) on the breast pocket. Scott learned early that he might have to actually work for a living, whereas I, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living - all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents.

At an age when I was helping to rack up my friends' parents' expensive automobiles and puking up Boone's Farm on Persian carpets, Scott was already working - for Henry Kinison at the Brook line High restaurant. He was doing it for money. Junior year, he took a job in a 'Hungarian Continental' joint, and as a fishmonger at Boston's Legal Seafood. One worked, and that was it. Scott, though still unmoved by the glories of food, found that he preferred cooking to his other imagined career option: electrical engineer or electrician.

His early mentor, Kinison, urged him to attend Johnson and Wales' culinary program in Providence, and along the lines of 'Why not?' he went along.

He hated it.

While studying, he began working for Bob Kinkaid at the much-vaunted Harvest restaurant in Cambridge, and if there is a single epiphany in Scott Bryan's life, a single moment when he decided what it was he was going to do for the rest of his life, it was there - when he first tasted Kinkaid's lobster salad with foie gras and truffle vinaigrette. His reaction was immediate. He decided to leave Johnson and Wales.

'I'm not going back,' he said, abandoning culinary school for life in the real world.

He was good. He had to be. Kinkaid clearly knew he was on to something. With Scott barely out of high school, Kinkaid packed him off to France with the one-word instruction:'Eat!'

Like me, Scott is conflicted on the issue of the French. We like to minimize their importance, make fun of their idiosyncrasies.'It's a different system over there,' he said, talking about the work habits of the surrender-monkey. 'You start young. For the first ten years of your career, you get your ass kicked. They work you like a dog. So, when you finally get to be a sous-chef, or a chef, your working life is pretty much over. You walk around and point.' Putting a last twist on his foiegras torpedo, he shrugged. 'Socialism, man. It's not good for cooks.'

But when he sees bad technique, technique that's not French, it's torture. As Scott well knows - and would be the first to admit - as soon as you pick up a chef's knife and approach food, you're already in debt to the French. Talking about one of the lowest points in his career, a kitchen in California, he described going home every night 'ashamed, and a little bit angry', because 'the technique was bad . . . it wasn't French!

They may owe us a big one for Omaha Beach, but let's face it, without my stinky ancestors we'd still be eating ham steak with pineapple ring. Scott knows this better than anybody.

Back from France, he rejoined Kinkaid, opening 21 Federal with him on Nantucket.

Now here, exactly, is where our career paths divide.

Scott had some chops now. He was good on the line. He had a resume, some notable names and recommendations, working experience, exposure to France and French food.

So did I, at that point in my career. I was good! I'd been to France. I had a CIA diploma - at a time when that was a pretty rare and impressive credential. So, what the hell happened? How come I'm not a three-star chef? Why don't I have four sommeliers?

Well, there