That rabbit, which gave up its life, I had to make sure that I utilized it in the best way I could and every bit of it. And yet you have risen to the highest of stature of culinary greatness. People become very anxious in those moments. Not only on our profession, but on the consumer, and now beginning to have an impact on the way our food is being produced, is being grown, is being delivered, and thats a very important thing for us all. What we call a stage in an American restaurant, or a stagiaire in a French one, does that literally mean a stager? To cook something and overcook it, and then just throw it away would be just a waste of life. He is the first and only American-born chef to hold multiple three-star ratings from the prestigious Michelin Guide, as well as the first American male chef to be designated a Chevalier of The French Legion of Honor. Just go. It was a new restaurant with a chef named Pierre Latuberne and Pierres wife, Anne-Marie. And in San Francisco we had Herb Caen. His flagship restaurant, The French Laundry, has been called the best in the world (twice), he's created an empire but maintained his impermeable brand and he's the only American chef to have been simultaneously awarded three Michelin Stars at two different restaurants. When I started to cook, the first cookbook that I received was from my mother, and she gave me a cookbook called A Treasury of Great Recipes. You come back at 5:30. Rakel's refined French cuisine catered to the expensive tastes of Wall Street executives and received a two-star review from The New York Times. So there were five of them. You are trying to prepare a dish without having the proper ingredients or necessarily even the knowledge of those ingredients, and that really became for me a real building block, because I understood that. We all have our own core values, and I think that we can identify them when pressed to find them. The following year, Michelin inspectors came to the West Coast and gave The French Laundry three stars as well. So there was just the three of us and then along came my younger sister when she remarried. Kellers mother managed a restaurant in the area, and both Thomas and his older brother Joseph worked in the restaurant kitchen from an early age. Could I interact better with those around me who influence our restaurants? Youre American. In 2013 we raised to ninth. I mean youre in Paris. It was camaraderie. Thomas Keller: No, not really. And for some reason he said, Okay, Thomas. And then you work until 11:00 at night. "At some point you want to say, 'I gave, I gave, I gave now it's time for us,'" he said. People walking around town, he would just chat people up and, Oh, you know, my son owns The French Laundry. And they would say, Oh, can you get me a reservation? Oh yeah. The demographics were very important in that process, which we just totally threw out the window, or we just miscalculated. In the next few years, Keller would pursue his interest in French cooking, developing close relationships with the cooks and proprietors of French restaurants in his own country while applying for jobs in France. He enjoyed nothing more I think what he enjoyed the most when he would come out here with us and spend summers here, and ultimately moved here, was actually getting in line for dinner with the team every night at staff meal. Theres 12 rabbits in the cage and hes explaining to me in broken English how to kill the rabbit. Were they going to come from France? Patience, and perseverance, are a virtue. When the hotel was sold, Keller clashed with the new owners and found himself again at liberty. Keller was full of new ideas he was eager to implement, but he and the owner did not agree, and Keller moved to a smaller restaurant, Raphael, which he found far more congenial. So he was very proud to be able to talk to our suppliers and get them to either give us extra or to reduce our price. The morel mushrooms, everything was just right, and I didnt appreciate it. Its the stamina, the commitment, the dedication to the craft is unparalleled. The two would work so closely together that within a year she had moved in with him in the house behind the restaurant, and the couple have become partners in life as well as business. When he was seven his parents separated, and Thomas moved with his mother and two older brothers to Palm Beach, Florida, where his grandmother and great aunts helped raise him and his brothers. I had moved to a new community, didnt really know anything about the community, felt very uncomfortable again trying to find a home, trying to find a place I could really embrace and be the chef. Alice Waters had opened Chez Panisse, and since then the influence of that sort of sourcing, that farm-to-table cuisine, has spread far and wide. How do we respond to that? Cooking and food preparation are applied sciences, and chefs understand them fully to succeed at their job. To get by, he started a small business, EVO, importing Italian olive oil. But it was such a wonderful moment that lasted for days afterwards, because you had all the leftovers. I knew I could cook. We changed every day. Thomas Keller: Thank you. A sports franchise kind of mentality as well as a militaristic kind of mentality, because we do have and the same in the military you have hierarchy. Located down the street from The French Laundry, it serves moderately priced French bistro fare, with Bouchon Bakery opening next door a few years later (in 2006 Keller opened a branch of the bakery in the Time Warner Center in Manhattan). It was a restaurant in West Palm Beach, Florida. In 2003, Richard Capizzi became the first pastry chef (not to mention the youngest) to ever sweep the awards at the U.S. With more than. It didnt matter if you were doing fine dining, family dining. So when we started to think about Thanksgiving here at our restaurant, The French Laundry, when we first opened, we started thinking about that, serving that kind of meal, which was a meal that allowed you to interact with it. One of our primary jobs, one of our primary responsibilities is to hire the right people, make sure that the people that were hiring, those individuals, young men and women, are of the right attitude, of the right mindset, have the right skills to enter into our profession. [1], In 2005, he was awarded the three-star rating in the inaugural Michelin Guide for New York City for his restaurant Per Se, and in 2006, he was awarded three stars in the inaugural Michelin Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area for The French Laundry. One of the most moving little notes on your website is easy to miss, but its just the fact that The French Laundry has had three stars since 2007, and Per Se has had three stars since 2006. Everybody became more frugal during that time, as they do always in times of uneasiness and disruption in our economic climate. June 13, 2007 FOR someone who works in a restaurant, watching a rat try to become a chef might seem like just another day at work. Somebody will hire you. I wanted to make sure that I had somewhere to go to. I mean were the mothership, were the foundation of Thomas Keller Restaurant Group and certainly the inspiration for Per Se. Could you tell us how that came about? So at that right moment, in that right period of time, I was able to put my application in and be approved for an SBA loan. [7] Keller spent nineteen months raising $1.2million from acquaintances and investors to purchase the restaurant, then re-opened it in 1994. Taking his most . I said, Jonathan, youre the first chef de cuisine. Where were you when you decided to make this your career? You had to check the soap every three hours. You know, working with a group of other young men in a line, in a high-stress environment where its very intense and youre cooking food. Keller remained in New York, consulting, but was completely unsatisfied. After three years at La Rive, unable to buy it from the owners, he left and moved to New York and then Paris, apprenticing at various Michelin-starred restaurants. During summers, he worked as a cook in Rhode Island. That didnt last long because Bill pretty quickly sold the hotel to a German company, and of course there was a real cultural shift for me and I left, and certainly that became my jumping off point for French Laundry. So hes tasked with many different things and having to juggle many different things. And I walked on the property. Visitors to Napa brought word back to San Francisco, where favorable mention in the press drew interest from even farther away. Thomas Keller, who was named "America's Best Chef" in 2001 by TIME Magazine, among countless other accolades, has taught a generation of restaurateurs how to not only be like him, but to be even better. He began his career at a young age working in a Palm Beach restaurant managed by his mother. Paul Bocuse said it very well. Paul tells a lovely story about when he was a young man in The French Resistance being wounded and being taken to an American military hospital, American field military hospital and being given a blood transfusion. The restaurant was Per Se, in New York. Thomas Keller Chef & Proprietor of Restaurants by Thomas Keller and Founder of Regiis Ova Caviar "Success, for me, is not about fortune or fame. And kitchens are run in that way because its all command response. And we thought this location was just like the perfect location. In 1986 he became co-owner and executive chef of the original Fleur de Lys in San Francisco. And I really have to thank those who nominated me: Daniel Boulud, Paul Bocuse, Jerome. You, as a dishwasher, even though you may have been perceived as the lowliest position in a kitchen, you touched everybody, and your job was critical in their ability to be successful. And some friends of mine, who were very influential in my move, were moving to California and they said, Come to California and try it out. At the same time a gentleman named Bill Wilkinson, who I had a brief conversation with about four years earlier, he was opening a hotel in L.A. called Checkers. My oldest brother was here at the same time. Was it a restaurant that was progressive and contemporary? The idea of service is so pertinent to both worlds, military and culinary. Thomas Keller was born in Oceanside, California. Thomas Keller: La Rive was outside of Catskill. We can all cook. I had been fired from another. And he said, Okay, this is how much this is going to cost you. And I said, You know, Bob, I really dont have any money, but I have this olive oil. I put this olive oil on his desk and I told him about this olive oil and what I was doing with it and The French Laundry and all this. Thomas Keller: Interpretation is a very, very important word. The multiple Michelin-starred chef (The French Laundry, Per Se, Bouchon) spent the past five years . What did you eat? Who was going to receive one star, two stars, three stars? It was a daunting task for us every day to produce this menu. And to be able to walk into that restaurant as the first American to receive three Michelin stars and be embraced by Mr. Vrinat, who I have until the day he died had such a profound respect for. What does the chef think I should choose? I have five siblings: four older brothers and one younger sister. Of course we had the Culinary Institute of America, which began in the mid-40s after World War II. And to reach the podium for the first time, Daniel, Jerome and I felt that we had finally been able to give Paul what we promised. Keller still believed that to become the chef he wanted to be, he needed to study French cuisine at the source by working in Frances great restaurants. You got one more to go.. Every day after school hed come home and watch Graham Kerr or Julia Child. I mean thats it. If you could be more efficient than the person next to you, then you could have more time to learn what you wanted to learn, to continue to grow and continue to evolve, continue to progress. His employers there, Pierre and Anne-Marie Latuberne, recommended him to Ren and Paulette Macary, who operated a restaurant of their own, La Rive, in Catskill, New York during the summer season. [6], Following the split with his partner at Rakel, Keller took various consultant and chef positions in New York and Los Angeles. But you know, just standing there watching this beautiful, elegant, ferocious animal was something that was very captivating. And the kitchen that I was in was nothing like any kitchens that I had been in in America. Had I known everything that I was going to have to do over the course of the next 18 months, I would have given up right away. Everybody did. I explained my intentions. I had already closed two restaurants. Hes gone. So its not just we relate to chef as somebody thats only in the kitchen, but remember, its chef de cuisine, chef of the kitchen, chef of the electricians, chef of the plumbers. For three years he wrote to restaurants all over France. Thomas Keller: Herb Caen was a great writer. And great restaurants have to be consistent. In 2015 we finally reached the podium, the first time the Americans have ever been on the podium in France. Ive had some extraordinary honors in my life. And I thought, Wow, this may be a great opportunity for me. Were cooks. Jonathan Benno was our chef at the time. Where were their parameters for that? So they do this extraordinary blini there. At The French Laundry, Keller applied everything he had learned from his years as a chef and his own previous ventures. And then of course the following summer I moved to France. Thomas Keller: This was a time in my life when I started to embrace the idea of doing things myself outside of the kitchen, having a garden. I learned that doing things that other people do better is not necessarily good just because youre doing it in your own backyard or in your own house. Thats where the name comes from. After World War II the men came back and the women stayed at work and that spawned the convenience food generation, which was us. And I think if I was born with that, I got that from my mother. Thomas Keller: On a trip to Napa Valley one spring day, Jonathan Waxman, who is a friend of mine who had opened a restaurant in New York and now is opening a restaurant here in Napa Valley. Thomas Keller: We used to think about luxury as choices, right. And then of course you have the chef de cuisine who is responsible for the entire kitchen. We fell to tenth. The following year Michelin was going to launch in San Francisco. I was thinking that, I dont know, fireworks. Mr. Keller is 61, an age when other. Thomas Keller grew up in the restaurant business, in Palm Beach, Florida, working his way up from dishwasher to cook. Im looking at this rabbit hanging on the side of the barn, and 11 rabbits in the cage. I had much more control over it. But Gourmet magazine picked it up and they thought it was very important. Cook it by the numbers, following every instruction. Keller plans to continue this movement at the art deco-themed TAK Room on the firth floor New Yorks Hudson Yards complex. Now people who are interested in food and wine, theyll read the food section of The New York Times or the Chronicle or the L.A. Times or any newspaper. You had to get the glassware to the bartenders so they could do their job. Were all in it together, and we all have to support one another. It was fascinating, and again certainly we were very proud and honored. You work through service. Theyll pick up the food guides. So I was a little further ahead than some of the other stagiaires that were there who were much younger than I, who were more worried about how to make a veal stock or how to turn a vegetable or different things that are basic that I had already learned. As a customer, you come in and you put yourself in the hands of a chef. What an impact that must have had! What about books that you read growing up? We had a choice of getting on an airplane and missing the phone call, because it was going to come at 10:00 in the morning New York time, which was 4:00 in the afternoon in Paris. By 1986, he felt ready to try his hand again at opening a restaurant of his own. Thomas Keller is a man who needs no introduction. But no, you went to work in the best restaurants. He joined forces with his friend Serge Raoul to open a restaurant whose name combined the first letters of the partners last names: Rakel. My first job in the kitchen was as a commis. We invite those from our veterans home here in Yountville down to experience a meal around a table in a familiar place with food that is nourishing in every way. Of course his son went to school here in the Culinary Institute of America and now lives in America. We had a beautiful time on the back porch of our house, and that Monday night, the next night, he passed away. Can I send you a copy? Right. We have to give them training. In 1996, the James Beard Foundation named Keller the Best Chef in America. A 1997 article by the influential New York Times critic Ruth Reichl pronounced The French Laundry the most exciting place to eat in the United States, and soon lovers of fine food from all over the world were making the pilgrimage to Yountville to sample Kellers fare. Back to the first cookbook you received as a gift from your mom. Were you primarily raised by your mother? He later opened a gourmet Burger Bar in Las Vegas, Nevada, which features a $60 "Rossini Burger" made of American Kobe beef, sauted foie gras, and shaved truffles. I dont know, whatever. I could only hope for the next 20 years that Im able to continue to dedicate and commit myself on a different level to our profession and to my teams and continue to offer them the ability, the platform to elevate themselves. It was kind of this magical place, and I just felt an instant connection to it. On February 16, 2004, Keller's much-anticipated Per Se restaurant opened in the Time Warner Center complex in New York under the helm of Keller's Chef de Cuisine, Jonathan Benno. Thomas Keller: Its funny. And this olive oil was a small olive oil company I began to kind of keep me solvent in some ways, but also keep me motivated and keep me busy and have kind of I wouldnt even call it plan B. We are the first chefs, first American chefs in America to receive three stars. So I thought, What better place to celebrate than Taillevent, my first three-star work experience? So I called Taillevent, and of course Jean-Claude Vrinat said, Please, welcome. So five days a week, my meals were paid for. And they would just be, you know, they were 50 years younger than he was, and he would just be telling them stories and theyd just be like listening on the edge of their seats, and that was one of the favorite things that he did. We had never when I say we, Im talking about the community of chefs who have always aspired to be of that quality, not necessarily ever achieving those stars, but to be of that quality. I gathered everybody around and I said, I think were going to have a great day tomorrow, so we opened a glass of champagne. It takes a village to build a great restaurant. What college did you attend for that short while? We all promised him that we would do our jobs collectively in organizing a foundation that would support a U.S. culinary team to compete in Lyon and actually reach the podium. In June 2019, Keller became the first U.S. inductee into The Master Chefs of France, the oldest savory chef association in the world. You started quite young, didnt you? The trio had hoped that their proximity to a sports arena would provide them with a steady flow of business, but the arenas patrons were not interested in the sophisticated fare he was offering, and the restaurant closed its doors. I was committed. Thomas Keller: I was working at a restaurant. World War II kind of shook that all up. It was a very special treat to be invited to lunch with Thomas Keller, the world-renowned chef and owner of the French Laundry, Per Se, and many other award-winning restaurants. So we had to have a commercial bank loan. We finally achieved what we promised, to reach the podium. And if we do that, if we do that every day, then thats the best we can do, and we can feel comfortable that we have given you the best. Its just breathtaking to look at, very classic, the aromas, the butter, and of course you have a tin of caviar and beautiful glasses of champagne. We live by them day to day, not necessarily having written them down. So we have a sous-chef thats responsible for canaps and fish for example. Just go over there. They had enjoyed several years of modest success but were now looking to sell their business. It was a wonderful restaurant. When he was hired as chef de cuisine at La Reserve, he was the first American to lead one of New Yorks distinguished French restaurants. We also support the Semper Fi Foundation, which is actually in Camp Pendleton. That same year, the bible of international food connoisseurs, the Guide Michelin, paid its first visit to New York and awarded Kellers Per Se its highest rating: three stars. Which one do I want? Were they going to be Americans? You know, jai-alai is a sport. I stopped to see him, say hello, see how he was doing. He wanted America to have a better representation at the Bocuse dOr. I wonder where that ambition came from to be the best, and why didnt you decide to go to school for that? The chef has recently come under fire for praising a major Donald Trump donor. Every dish, we have to be thinking about in a way that, when someone comes in, its going to relate that experience to what Ruth said, because now your expectations as a guest have become greater. So when I got there, I had a good foundation of technique, a good understanding of classic cuisine, certainly the understanding of the vocabulary in a French kitchen. I dont know why, I guess because of the age difference, my brother Joseph was allowed to handle a knife, therefore he was allowed to work with the cooks. You're science-oriented. At this time newspapers still had a social columnist. Theyll pick up Bon Appetit magazine or Gourmet or Saveur or any of the magazines. He said, No matter how good of a cook you are, unless theres people in your seats, youre going to fail. Of course I read that after we failed. Once again, things got off to a good start, and Keller enjoyed making friends with colleagues in the West Coast restaurant scene. We were able to expand our staff. He loved wine. 1. Thomas Keller: It was my second failure in a restaurant. I believe in you, but I need something. Its really, thats where I learned about the idea of being a team as it relates to a sports franchise. On January 26, 2004, Keller opened his restaurant Bouchon in Las Vegas. On the other hand, we look at it as a sports franchise as well. Simple is hard. You have received the highest rating in Michelin, three stars. And I was just It was emotional. The chef de partie is a chef who is responsible for a specific station. But Paul Bocuse, who has been an icon in our profession, someone who Ive always looked up to, somebody who changed the way our profession is perceived, somebody whos changed the way we eat, literally changed the way we eat, started a competition, international competition 30 28 years ago to bring the world together on an international level for a culinary competition that resulted in relationship building, in teaching, in awareness and camaraderie, and helping to expand the awareness of our profession around the world.
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