Interesting article at the Atlantic website -- Grant Achatz on celeb chefs, leaving the kitchen, and related issues. I've read similar takes on those topics by Bourdain and Boulud. So he's in good company. And it makes sense to me. Both the need to do something other than just be in the kitchen cooking in order to find inspiration or recharge the batteries, and that as a chef's career evolves he's going to be spending more time doing other "stuff" and less time actually cooking. I only spent a few weeks in a pro kitchen (not cooking; washing dishes) but it was long enough to confirm what pretty much every chef or writer or blogger says: cooking (esp. line cooking) is a young person's game.
The other thing I wanted to say about the Achatz article is that it never ceases to surprise how some folks can get so bent out of shape if "the chef" isn't there. I dunno... I'd have thought that anyone going to Alinea would be enough of a food geek to understand how it works in a bigtime restaurant. We've been to a few "big chef" restos and only once have we ever even laid eyes on the chef. That was at Morimoto when he was working the sushi bar for a while the night we were there. Certainly didn't see (or expect to see) Colicchio at Craft. The idea that you'd expect the presence/absence of "big chef" to make any huge difference in your meal strikes me as whimsical at best. The idea that you'd get bent out of shape and actually let it ruin your meal seems flatout fucking insane.