Drew Nieporent of Nobu, Tribeca Grill, Montrachet, and countless other iconic endeavors gives us a glimpse inside as he conquers the known world.

Point of Origin: I was born and bred in New York City, an original New Yorker. I went to Stuyvesant High School, then known as Sty Hi, before going to Cornell Hotel School in Ithaca, NY, pretty much my first time away from home, not counting sleepaway camp.

Occupations: After I graduated, I was the chef de rang (a.k.a. foodie honcho) aboard the Sagafjord and Vistafjord cruise ships, then worked at some of the most prestigious restaurants in Manhattan -- La Grenouille and Le Perigord -- and was the captain (in a tux!) at La Reserve, before the Plaza Athénée's Le Regence French restaurant between 83rd and 85th streets. We earned three stars from the New York Times only seven weeks after we opened -- a little like winning the lottery in those days.

When I sit across from Philippe Petit, I look into eyes that have seen what no other eyes have, or will see again. Thirty five years ago, the French artiste sky-walked on a 450-pound cable between Tower 1 and Tower 2 of New York City’s World Trade Center. For almost forty-five minutes, he walked, danced, hopped, knelt and lay down on the wire, as microdots of people watched from below, and as police waited at the edge to arrest him. The word “death-defying” doesn’t do justice to what the Frenchman achieved that day. Imagination-defying is more like it. For the past seven years, the Twin Towers have been framed within the context of their destruction. But Man on Wire, the new documentary by James Marsh, recalls the towers at their birth, and the man who looked at them and saw a stage in the sky.