DANIEL BOULUD is inevitably drawn to an intense but basic roast chicken in the West Village. Missy Robbins craves East Village ramen. And for Hugue Dufour, only those pristine oysters in Grand Central Terminal will do.

At their stoves, New York’s starred chefs are very different from you and me. But when they’re ready to inhabit downtime mode, they favor the casual and even the simple. Frequently they return to the same couple of places and order the same thing — again and again.

Though they could dine anywhere, and certainly proprietors of New York’s most distinguished restaurants would personally cook anything for them, many culinary luminaries choose straightforward fare when they kick back. Is it that the hurly-burly of their complex restaurant lives (and the high degree of difficulty represented by their own menus) draws them to plain instead of fancy? Or do the challenges of running kitchens, payrolls, partnerships and highly public personas demand the occasional antidote of comfort food? All of the above. When he fancies a restaurant where he can feel truly comfortable, Mr. Boulud doesn’t seek out the duck terrine with apple confit from the menu at his restaurant Daniel. He settles into a wicker seat at Barbuto, in the West Village.

There, in a restaurant with roll-up doors and concrete floors that was once a garage, he orders the chef Jonathan Waxman’s deceptively unadorned but deeply flavorful roasted chicken with its salsa verde of capers, anchovies, garlic, hand-chopped parsley, arugula, basil, tarragon and sage. “It’s all so fresh, so simple, so well done,” Mr. Boulud said of Barbuto. “It’s my security place, where I feel at home.” He takes friends and family there, as well as other chefs, like Thomas Keller of Per Se.