Eric Ripert really is that cool. The four-star chef—a sometime Top Chef judge, practicing Buddhist, and altogether nice person—announced this morning that throughout 2009, Le Bernardin will donate $1 to City Harvest for each customer who dines at the restaurant. City Harvest feeds more than 260,000 men, women, and children each week; the charity organization “rescues” more than 20 million pounds of food each year from various food service sectors. Chef Ripert also announced this morning that $1 will be donated to City Harvest for every copy sold of his new behind the scenes cookbook called On The Line (seen here), which we wrote about last month.

In 1994, Eric Ripert became the executive chef of Le Bernardin after chef-owner Gilbert Le Coze died of a sudden heart attack. The following year, Ripert was only 29 years old when the restaurant was re-reviewed and kept its four-star rating from the New York Times. Le Bernardin has had a total of four four-star New York Times reviews since its New York opening in 1986, and has consistently been awarded a top rating of three Michelin stars since guide inspectors first set up shop here in 2005. more ›