With wife number one in tow (as of this writing there have been three), Mallmann arrived in Amsterdam in 1980 and made his way—by bicycle—to Le Doyenne in Paris. "That first day, I had to hold myself up to keep from falling. I was so impressed and fell so in love with the food, techniques, dress, and organization of classic French dining. The white hats looked so beautiful!"

Over the next half-dozen years, Mallmann ping-ponged between Europe and South America. He worked for a string of the most illustrious chefs in France during one of the country's most gastronomically inventive eras. At L'Archestrate, he served in the frenetic kitchen of one of the prime movers behind nouvelle cuisine, Alain Senderens. "The tension at the hour of service was very strong," Mallmann would write later in his book, La Cocina del Instante. "He [Senderens] allowed no errors, and there was a constant level of screaming."

Mallmann also worked for one of nouvelle's other godfathers, Roger Vergé, at the Moulin des Mougins, in Provence. He wrote of Vergé, "I learned cooking from him, but more than that I learned that a calm atmosphere in the back of the house establishes an attitude that arrives at the table with better service. This is a truth for any kitchen."

It was while he was with Vergé that another life-changing event occurred: Mallmann's wife, Karina, became pregnant. "I knew I would need better and steadier money," he said. "Windows on the World was opening in New York and looking for a chef. I wrote to Joe Baum [who got the contract to design and manage Windows], and he asked me to come see him. We were set for the move to America."

Fortuitously, just as Mallmann was about to leave, a telegram marked urgent arrived from a banker in Buenos Aires. The chef for a big nightclub/restaurant project had just been canned: Would he step in and take the position? The money was good at Club Hippopotamo. It quickly became the glam hangout in B.A., and Mallmann both contributed to and basked in the glow of celebrity heat. The work, however, did not mesh with his aesthetic, and in 1981 he quit. More important for his culinary development, Mallmann had also tired of being a French chef in a South American country. He began to move away from nouvelle cuisine and, as he said, "its decorative sauces that were perfected by a very few and poorly copied by thousands of chefs, including myself. I got very bored of all this three-star thing. It was my church for so many years. All those towers and decorations and too many things on a plate pushed me to go brutal and beastly in my cooking."

He opened a small cooking school. It was an immediate success, in part because Mallmann now starred on Argentina's most popular televised cooking show. That was fun, but after four years he was again restive: He wanted his own restaurant. One day, an acquaintance approached Mallmann with an offer. How much money would it take, the potential backer asked, to open a restaurant? Francis said $50,000. Two days later, the man called and asked Francis to come sign the papers. "So I go to his house. On the desk was a brown envelope full of money and, unobtrusively, a pistol. He said, 'Well, you know I like you very much, but I don't want to be your partner because I don't know the restaurant business. I want to help you, though. Take the money and start your restaurant. Think about it. Whatever you say, you must do. This is a debt—if you don't pay, your son will.'"