CHEF'S MENU is his resume, revealing his education, experience and aspirations. The elegantly printed menu of Patchogue's Louis XVI captures the culinary career of its chef, Jean-Claude Teulade, and demonstrates his ability to marry the classical French cuisine he learned as a youth to the revolutionary nouvelle cuisine that blew through the kitchens of France when he was a young chef.

Teulade grew up in a small town near Toulouse in southwest France. By the age of 12, he was cooking the Christmas turkey and by 15 he had decided to become a chef. After getting his degree from the French Academy of Cooking in Toulouse, he began his apprenticeship in some of Paris' finest restaurants.

He was cooking at the famed - and famously old-school - Tour D'Argent in the '70s, when he first heard about nouvelle cuisine. "I was very interested, but my chef didn't want to hear about it." But Teulade doesn't begrudge his classical, if rather inflexible, apprenticeship; rather, he's thankful. "A young person should learn the traditional way before getting inventive," he said.

And, indeed, his menu pays homage to traditional French ways in its use of intricate techniques, such as those for puff pastry (seen in feuillette of escargot and Wellington of venison) and penchant for luxe ingredients (lots of caviar, truffles and foie gras).