When Normand Leclair died Sunday, a piece of Rhode Island history went with him.

His Red Rooster Tavern, founded in 1969, was legend. It's been said the North Kingstown restaurant was one of Rhode Island's most beloved. It had an almost cult-like following of people who loved continental cuisine and fine wine. Those weren't yet popular concepts in most of America 53 years ago.

But with exceptional food and service, it was embraced by diners here. Weekend reservations were hard to come by without making plans many days in advance. 

Providence may be the center of the Rhode Island culinary universe now, but it was 7385 Post Rd. back then.

Twenty years ago, a retired Leclair explained part of the secret. 

"You can't scare people with food" if you want to serve it to them, he observed.

He remembered when Cornish game hens hit the food scene. He put them on the menu. He didn't sell a one.

"Then I called them 'Roasted Little Chickens' and sold out of the special."

Leclair learned that you have to keep everything at customers' level, making food consumer-friendly. Then you could  stretch their palates with Beef Wellington and bottles of Bordeaux that had to be decanted. This was even before a carafe of house wine came out of a jug.

But Leclair and his late co-founder Frank Hennessey were well ahead of the curve. They even had a  temperature-controlled cellar and won many wine awards, including from Wine Spectator magazine.

Leclair didn't come from a restaurant family. He said his mother's style of cooking was hearty French Canadian. One of his home-cooking favorite was pig's feet cooked with gravy and meatballs.

After discharge from the U.S. Army, Leclair opened his casual Normand's Chick 'n' Pick restaurant on Post Road, across the street from where the Rooster would open in North Kingstown. It was a busy place.

The menu went well beyond chicken. There was plenty of seafood served, plus  Delmonico and porterhouse steaks, sandwiches, burgers and chicken livers. 

He had a ready-made crowd from the Naval Air Station at Quonset Point. (It wasn't deactivated until 1974.)

They followed him across the street when the Rooster opened.  

"When those ships came in, it seemed like 5,000 sailors walked down the road and into the restaurant. It was like New Year's," Leclair recounted in 2002. "And the ladies came from all over the state to meet them." 

But what he chose to serve – that was what really mattered. 

It was Leclair's extended January vacations that made the difference, he said. He closed down the restaurant so he could see what the rest of the world was cooking in Spain and Portugal and beyond. He recalled bringing back the idea for Beef Wellington from London and introducing it to his diners with his own spin.

One Sunday when he had a lot of chicken, he made Chicken Wellington the special and it became a signature dish.

He loved entertaining his entire family there every week for Sunday dinner. He worked such long hours that it was the only time that he could visit with them.

After his father died, he warmly remembered the weddings of his stepmother and later his sister Sylvia. He loved seeing them so happy.

As for the name and Leclair's history of collecting lucky roosters? He said he chose it  because it was on Chinese New Year, the year of the rooster, when he finally won the struggle to get a liquor license for the restaurant.

Leclair named Julia Child among his friends, as well as other culinary luminaries. But he remained a humble man who wanted to educate. He taught cooking classes and catered home parties. In 2011, he began to teach children in the Fit2cook4Kids camp program how to cook. 

He wrote three cookbooks, “Culinary Expressions,” “Chicken Expressions” and "Seafood Expressions.” Plus he kept traveling, noting his favorites trips were chefs' tours of Tuscany and Cuba.

Normand's years of late were split between Lauderhill, Florida, and his Rhode Island home in Exeter, with his longtime partner, Tom Sylvia. They enjoyed friends, family, theater and of course, food. Of his life with Sylvia, Leclair said, "Every day is a good day."

When Leclair's health declined last month, he began hospice care. But again he opened his arms and invited friends in to say hi, and their goodbyes, He called it a "living wake."

Leclair answered some questions including how would he like to be remembered.

"As as a decent man," he said.

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