A COMER.(teenage chef Jason Lepes)

If you spent an evening at the restaurant Aureole a year or two ago, you might have found, slipped in with the dainty bag of cookies you were given as you left, a little card printed with a phone number and the name "Jason Lepes." You might naturally have assumed that Jason Lepes was a chef at Aureole--perhaps the one who created those exquisite cookies--and, some time later, you might well have called him up and asked him to cater a private party. In which case it is very likely that you were surprised to discover, upon opening your door, that Jason Lepes was fifteen years old.

Flashback to January, 2001. Jason's father, a consultant, has taken Jason to dinner at Aureole as a special treat. Jason is only in ninth grade, but he is already six feet three inches tall and, not yet having suffered his fractured hip, he is active on his high-school basketball team. He has a teen-age boy's sleepy eyes and sleepy drawl. His hair is brown and curly and he has a round nose. He and his father have driven down from Bronxville, where they live. Aureole is not every fifteen-year-old's idea of a special treat, but Jason is not every fifteen-yearold. He is a precocious foodie. He has watched cooking shows since he was twelve. He cooks five-course dinners for twenty friends involving truffles, ostrich, duck, risotto, squab, which he smokes himself at the stove ("Smoked squab is not done often enough," he says), and wild-mushroom ravioli (his signature dish). "Just stuff that most people don't eat every day" is his general principle. Nonetheless, Jason is amazed by the food at Aureole. He says to his father, "I want to learn how to make this."

Soon afterward, he e-mails the restaurant and begs. He will work without pay, he says; he will do anything for them, he just wants to be in the kitchen. Astoundingly, the chef of Aureole says yes. And he is not sorry. Early on, Jason slices onions, hundreds and hundreds of onions. He sniffs the ovens to ...