Sunday Brunch With Grimod de la Reynière

Is it fair to be jealous of a guy dead since 1837?

A marvelous painting of a gourmand at his table hangs in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris — a portly, pink-faced figure happily gorging on a regal casserole, with a bottle of wine at one elbow and a luscious-looking soufflé at the other.

I’m also going to go ahead and assume that this is the guy they got the name for the bakery that serves my favorite almond croissant in New York.  Either that, or as I found out through Wikipedia, the Godfather of Gargamel from The Smurfs.