Entering the culinary arts at the age the way others enter the priesthood, Alain Passard, learned with the great masters before opening his own restaurant in Paris, l'Arpège, which has been a 3-star restaurant in the Michelin Guide for nearly 10 years now.His career is all the more exemplary when you consider how he shook up the small, conservative world of high gastronomy by bringing side dishes to center stage, eliminating the red meat on which he had built his reputation as a master chef to make the vegetable king of the plate.