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. Why Do His Michelin Stars Make Him Unique? Thomas Keller: There was a recipe in there, and I cant remember the name of the recipe, but it was a recipe from a very famous restaurant in Italy and it was, I believe, spinach pasta with prosciutto di Parma, parmesan cheese and butter. And so as a young person, my brother and I my brother Joseph, who is 18 months older than I would spend a lot of time in the restaurant and in the kitchen. The chef was highly regarded, three Michelin stars. And hell tell the story that he is part American because he has American blood running through his veins. I went to move to Paris in 1983 so I had been cooking now for almost a decade. Yet at that time, Bill Clinton was just inaugurated, became our president, and one of his goals was to fund the SBA and try to get small businesses to be thriving again. Oh, what difference does it make? Again I told him how proud we were of that, and that was our responsibility to make sure that we lived up to the reputation. Thank you, Chef. And then the second half of the book were recipes, but not recipes like we recognize today. Im not sure which one. I had only been there for a year, but I was determined. Hes that person thats going to support you, thats not going to let you fall and dont let him fall, and really its a team. It was considered one of the best restaurants in the world. So we had a gathering at the Per Se in New York where we invited the ambassador from France who came, and I thought of my colleagues of course, Daniel, Jerome, Alain Ducasse was there, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and it was a great celebration. He's the role model, the icon". Was it a restaurant that was progressive and contemporary? In the spring of 1992 he came upon a restaurant in Yountville, California founded by Sally Schmitt, in a space formerly occupied by an old French stream laundry. At the same time, be able to do my homework when needed, be able to function as a young person and still keep busy. You know, Everybody wants casual food now. It wasnt so much casual food that they wanted, it was more of a casual price that they really wanted. So between the two of them, they ignited what I believe we have, the resurgence of the farmer, the fisherman, the gardener and the forager. As a consultant for All-Clad Metalcrafters, Keller advised on the creation of the All-Clad Copper Core Bocuse DOr Cookware. In past interviews youve speculated that perhaps some people are born with a gene for hospitality. You have dinner. Michelin was coming to America and we didnt know what was going to happen. It would seem Chef Thomas Keller would have reason to be satisfied. We got on a plane the next day and came back to New York and of course celebrated again. The new restaurant got off to a good start, but the stock market crash of 1987 cut deeply into their business. Which one do I want? Where else would you aspire to go if it wasnt the best? And it was just one of those magical moments. We did everything from the pats to the desserts, and he taught me a great deal. We had Johnson and Wales. You have lunch. In the same way that our U.S. Olympic athletes represent our country, we feel the same way in our profession. So the schools that we did have were relatively new. Cooking wasnt the question, but could I lead a team better? And again, a coincidence that Paul Bocuse was going to be in America that March or that April. With more than 1.5 million copies of his cookbooks in print, he is the author of six cookbooks, including the recently released,The French Laundry, Per Se. 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. Did your mother or father support your culinary ambitions? It was the first American restaurant to receive this honor. Housed in a building once occupied by an actual laundry, the couple had named their restaurant The French Laundry. And kitchens are run in that way because its all command response. Then of course, I think it was 1988, when we had Black Monday and that was kind of the demise of that era of spending. Before we get there, Ruth Reichls article, as important as that was, there was an article prior to that which very few people realize. Its like, Wow, I can choose any one of these pillows. But which one really is the best? It was something that made him really comfortable. The California-based chef has won nearly every culinary award imaginable; his cookbooks line the shelf of other chefs and passionate home. How did you get started in the restaurant business? He has established a collection of restaurants that sets a new paradigm within the hospitality profession, including The French Laundry, in Napa Valley, and Per Se, in New York, among others. They didnt want to make the wrong choice, so they would ask the captain, So, what should I eat tonight? Well, we have this and we have this. And so 80 percent of the guests were choosing the tasting menu. And the level of the success or the result of the recipe was based on your current ability. One last question. Best Restaurant in the Americas (French Laundry), Best New Restaurant (Per Se), James Beard Foundation, 2005, Outstanding Restaurant (French Laundry), James Beard Foundation, 2006, Michelin Guide Bay Area, 3 Stars for The French Laundry, 2006 Current, Michelin Guide Bay Area, 1 Star for Bouchon, 2007 Current, Michelin Guide Bay Area, 1 Star for The Surf Club Restaurant, 2022 Current, Gayot Top 40 Restaurants in the US (French Laundry) 2004 2010, Gayot Top 40 Restaurants in the US (Per Se) 2010, Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor, presented by Chef Paul Bocuse on March 29, 2011, in NYC, Lifetime Achievement Award (French Laundry), This page was last edited on 4 March 2023, at 18:37. His New York friend Serge Raoul allowed Keller to stay in his Paris apartment. Another great milestone for you was the Legion dHonneur. I had left Checkers. And you never know. 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. You had to have the silverware to the servers so they could set the tables. Thomas Keller: We used to think about luxury as choices, right. Keller's mother was a restaurateur who employed Thomas as help when her cook got sick. Of course you had your glass racks or specific racks. The following year, Michelin inspectors came to the West Coast and gave The French Laundry three stars as well. He thought that would be the perfect kind of place for me, small, manageable, in a beautiful community here in Napa Valley. I mean an extraordinary chef. In the late 1980s he opened Rakel in New York, but left for California a few years later. She and her husband Don purchased the building in 1978 and converted it into a restaurant. So I went to Bobs office with this idea of The French Laundry and hoping that he would be my attorney. We respond to that by notching up our game. The opening of her debut restaurant, Core by Clare Smyth, marks an important milestone for Smyth, who trained under world-renowned chefs Thomas Keller and Alain Ducasse and made headlines as. And then of course you have the chef de cuisine who is responsible for the entire kitchen. And its up to that organization or that chef to define what youll do. I think the single most important thing you can do the single most important decision you make when youre making a reservation to a restaurant is not what restaurant youre going to, but who youre going with. And yet you have risen to the highest of stature of culinary greatness. And I realized that thats not why I came to France. Thomas Keller: It was my second failure in a restaurant. And as time went on we realized that we started selling more and more tasting menus. 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. Paul Bocuse said it very well. Working with a list of everyone he could think of who might have an interest in a restaurant or fine food venture, he called 400 prospects and finally attracted seed money from 52 individuals, one paying as much as $80,000 and some as little as $500 for a share of the business. Serge was my only investor (in Rakel) so his life was impacted by the failure of Rakel. I wanted to see new things. What the Marines say so much about is that discipline, is that commitment to what youre doing, and more important, the commitment to each other. Its fascinating that theres this underpinning of philosophy beneath the core value of great cuisine, of making it as good as it can possibly be. Thomas Keller: Thank you. We would have been on a flight so we would have missed the phone call. Thomas Keller: Per Se opened in 2004. I dont know if theres a hospitality gene as much as theres a nurturing gene. Keller and Cunningham opened a more casual establishment, Bistro Bouchon, in Yountville in 1998. And if theyre not better than you, then you havent done a very good job. [8], After the success of The French Laundry, Thomas and his brother, Joseph Keller (currently owner/chef of Josef's in Las Vegas), opened Bouchon in 1998. And he said, Oh, and by the way, Bouchon got one.. And certainly receiving the Legion of Honor from President Sarkozy was beyond anything I could ever dream of. It comes out in a beautiful pan. They didnt want steak Diane and pommes boulangre. When the hotel was sold, Keller clashed with the new owners and found himself again at liberty. A year later your skills your experience were increased, and if you made that same dish, it would be different. It was my generation that kind of missed that. Its the one hit wonders that are one hit wonders. And we were so proud. After The Dunes Club, Keller worked various cooking positions in Florida and soon became the cook at a small French restaurant called La Rive in the Hudson River valley in Catskill, New York. Yeah. The French government named him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in recognition of his lifelong commitment to the traditions of French cuisine and his role in elevating culinary art in America. You had to deliver the dishes back to the chefs, right? I think its discipline. Of course its such an uncomfortable story for a lot of people that my publisher didnt want to include it in the book and I made her. And that was my room. The important thing, he said, is to make sure to give to young chefs the right things, the right mentoring because "if we're not truly working to raise the standards of our profession, then we're not really doing our job. Thomas Keller: I know from a personal experience how your expectations can actually diminish an experience. He began his career at a young age working in a Palm Beach restaurant managed by his mother. You opened your own restaurant in New York in 1986. I became the chef de cuisine of La Reserve, which is on 49th Street. Were all in it together, and we all have to support one another. It was a normal thing and it still is today. Keller took a $5,000 cash advance on his credit card to retain an attorney who helped him structure a private placement offering. A beautiful time in my life. I wonder where that ambition came from to be the best, and why didnt you decide to go to school for that? [20] Other cookbooks that he has written or contributed are The Food Lover's Companion to the Napa Valley, Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide, Ad Hoc at Home (2009) and Bouchon Bakery (2012). You learn a lot from your mistakes. Thomas Keller: Interpretation is a very, very important word. And yes, there are some restaurants around the world that would use a stage in an inappropriate way by making him stand in the corner and peel potatoes for three months, but a true stage in a restaurant that has integrity and understands their responsibility and the purpose of a stage gives you a great opportunity to learn. Come over. And we went and it was an amazing moment to be able to walk into Taillevent, which had such a profound impact on my career, on my philosophy, on the culture that we have, on my skills, on everything in my life. So living that dream became one of the hardest things Ive ever done, but also one of the most gratifying things Ive ever done in my life. 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. In 2004 they opened a Bouchon Bakery & Caf in Las Vegas and a new fine dining establishment, Per Se, in New York City. Starting at $15/month (billed annually) for all classes and sessions. It was the Americans on the podium. I should have read that before. And of course that catapulted us to again be financially successful, which allowed us now to commit our resources in so many different ways. She would spend it seems like days preparing Thanksgiving dinner. You dont know. She became a restaurant manager. I learned the technique was important. 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. It was unprecedented in this country for a restaurant to get three stars from Michelin. We converted the restaurant into Caf Rakel. AllRightsReserved. Of course his son went to school here in the Culinary Institute of America and now lives in America. Made him a strawberry shortcake for dessert. Our job as chefs and as restaurant owners today is not just about our restaurants. And that became part of our and it changed, not every day. So efficiency became important, how you lined up the racks, how you put the plates in the racks, or when was the time to wash the glasses, when was the time to wash the silverware so that nothing so that everything became seamless for everybody. What happens? So it was one menu every day. So at the time I was born he was stationed in Camp Pendleton, which is right near Oceanside in California. When Thomas Keller says he's built a better chocolate bar, it's worth tasting the results. I could feel I have the ability to learn and to kind of expand. And Raphael was run just like the restaurants ran in France. So we have to our expectations in our kitchen, in our restaurant, in our service. Chef Thomas Keller takes a seat just outside the wall of windows enclosing his new kitchen, the centrepiece of The French Laundry's $10 million renovation, while inside about a dozen cooks smoothly begin preparations for evening service, when the performance will begin all over again, as it has for 23 years. Thomas Aloysius Keller (born October 14, 1955) is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author. It began in 1985 when I returned from France. It was about Pauls dream realized, America reaches the podium. I got in contact with the owners, Don and Sally Schmitt. Chefs understand how cutting, heating and cooling food change its composition. We did everything. He was a woodworking hobbyist. [12], Keller is the president of the Bocuse d'Or U.S. team and was responsible for recruiting and training the 2009 candidates. Out of those 400, 52 agreed to write a check, for a lot of different reasons, for any amount of money. We changed every day. Not only did I get a commercial bank loan, I also went to the Small Business Administration because I was still short on money. This was the area that was going to become the next advertising center of New York City. The sandwich resembles a typical BLT, with the addition of a fried egg. What influence do you think his Marine background might have had on the discipline with which you approach your craft? So yes, I primarily lived with my mother, and my grandmother for a little while as well, and my great aunts. So when they were divorced, that was her path. We can all cook. What better way to start a celebration than that? Back to the first cookbook you received as a gift from your mom. We try to limit the choices, relieve the anxiety, and give somebody an experience that then, when they leave the restaurant, its memorable. But I truly dont think that any moment that you get something to eat should just be about getting something to eat. I think that is really the essence of hospitality, is that you want to give people something that makes them happy, makes them feel good, nourishes them. Born to a marine drill sergeant and a restaurant manager . So if you dont want to be repetitive in what youre doing, you probably dont want to really be a cook. Feedback was the third discipline. We had an extraordinary dinner. And I went to his restaurant, had lunch on my way to Arbois and I left thinking, Wow. There were no quantities. Thomas Keller: I was working at a restaurant. And I learned at that moment a profound respect for the ingredients that we have, a profound respect for those individuals who bring them to us, and how committed they are to what they do, and how committed I have to be to what Im doing to respect what they do. And great restaurants have to be consistent. 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. He wanted to have chicken, barbeque chicken. [4] Four years after his parents divorced, the family moved east and settled in Palm Beach, Florida. Were putting our were composing our dishes in a way theyre going to be compelling for people, but we also have the ability to modify anything we do for somebody who has a dietary restriction or who just doesnt like something. Again, we dont know what to expect. Many times the advice was, Well just go. After a third summer at La Rive, he was working at Polo Restaurant in New York City when he finally received a job offer from a restaurant in Arbois in Northeastern France and packed his bags. He and his landmark Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry in Yountville, California, have won multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation, notably the Best California Chef in 1996, and the Best Chef in America in 1997. sous-chef. So, our morning sous-chef is responsible for really the beginning of the day and setting the tempo for the rest of the day, which means that he has to work with a lot of the commis, which are typically the youngest, of course the least skilled, the least experienced. In 1986, he opened his first restaurant in New York City, but the Wall Street crash of that year hit his business hard and he headed west. I mean were the mothership, were the foundation of Thomas Keller Restaurant Group and certainly the inspiration for Per Se. I understood it. And of course as a white, middle-class, educated American, I wasnt on the top of the list of somebody the SBA was going to give money to. It was familiar to him. You never say no to the chef, right? Thats really a different mentality, isnt it, than ordering off a big menu? The commitment they make to doing the same talk about doing the same thing every day. Now our core values can be related to a lot of different people some of them defining the same way, others not necessarily but they understand them. There was no real technique. 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. The second summer I decided to go to New York City to try my hand in Manhattan, and that was when I met Serge Raoul. You got one more to go.. No reality TV shows. Thomas Keller: There was one other a little less-known chef, who also inspired me and I think a lot of my colleagues, and that was Jean-Louis Palladin. Thomas Keller: Yeah. You have received the high There was a pause. It was like it was it just shocked us all. I mean its actually performing, and its a function, and its physical. He was very, very fascinated with cooking. I came up. It was about the engagement with others. What we call a stage in an American restaurant, or a stagiaire in a French one, does that literally mean a stager? Thomas Keller: It was a very difficult time in New York City. I guess it was a much safer position for me around the dishwasher, whether it was at that early age, or more importantly, when I began to realize that I wanted to cook, at the Palm Beach Yacht Club. Otherwise it wasnt going to be good. 1996 - 2023 American AcademyofAchievement. I became a chef there and moved to Los Angeles. 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. I wanted to travel. But in retrospect it was beautiful. From there, he honed his skills at the heart of Thomas Keller's Restaurant Group, rising from a sous chef at Per Se to the executive pastry chef at both Per Se and Bouchon Bakery within a mere two years. Testosterone is raging and youre with all these its a group. Thats the system that has been in place since Escoffier codified The French kitchen in the early 1900s. The ignorance allowed me to do it. 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. Maybe it was a plan D as an olive oil purveyor. So there were five of them. I think thats more of what I meant. We just received three stars. He relocated to France in . Well offer a four-course menu and a five-course menu. So we started out with a menu that had up to seven or eight choices in each category. And he said to me one day, he said, You know, Thomas, the reason cooks cook is really to nurture people. And at that moment that really resonated with me and I said, Wow, I want to become a chef.. Youre working in a restaurant and in France you work in a restaurant Monday through Friday and you work both services, lunch and dinner so you get to work at 9:00 in the morning. The entire pastry production, the entire pastry service, working with the chef de cuisine on the philosophy of the pastry. And those are his two chefs. Those were things that he was familiar with so and just telling stories. I needed to commit myself to doing something I had never done before. Youve mentioned the value of consistency, but nothing says it like that. Organization as a dishwasher really meant that you had to set up a template for the servers to, you know, where to put their dishes. I wanted to try new things. It was a wonderful restaurant. Were going to have this instant business. But we were doing, at the time, fine dining. Were cooks. 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. It was very interesting because the authors were Vincent and Mary Price, and it was their recipes of the great restaurants that they had experienced around the world, and it was this beautifully leather-bound book. Weve reached an interesting crossroads in the stagiaire program because the labor departments need to get involved, and if you have somebody in your kitchen, its not a learning experience, theyre actually working. Not everything changed every day, but the menu changed every day. It certainly is very gratifying to see the interest now. We all learned that we had to be aware of the demographics and not just what we wanted to do, but what those around us really wanted to eat. Youre American. They served me pigeon and peas with morel mushrooms. They invited me up to meet them. That was at the beginning of that relationship with Serge Raoul. He loved food. So during the Korean War he was there for two and a half years. Why was it produced in that part of Italy? What does the American Dream mean to you? And he flew in from Paris with four other executives from Michelin and they had dinner at The French Laundry. He wrote his social column every day. It was a very small kitchen, and it was a beautiful experience because it was what I related to from just returning from France. Theres sous-chefs responsible in pastry in the same way. [23] Keller served as a consultant for the 2007 Pixar animated film Ratatouille, allowing the producer to intern in the French Laundry kitchen and designing a fancy layered version of ratatouille, "confit byaldi", for the characters to cook. He became a cook. So I stayed in New York for about a year looking for something to do, never really finding anything. 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. They become better than you. Everybody read Herb Caen whether you liked food or not. And his house was right next door to The French Laundry, where he lived and it was a common thing to go over there after work in the afternoon, at four or five oclock when the morning team would be finishing up, and theyd be over there on his front porch drinking beer out of cans, because he really liked canned beer as opposed to bottled beer. Entertainment was going to the Beaubourg and taking a French lesson in the audio class downstairs, or going to the museums or walking around Paris. It was on West 45th Street in West Palm Beach, right next door to the jai-alai fronton. The owner was more like the owner of the restaurant that I worked at when I was in the Catskill at La Rive. It took 19 months to raise the money to purchase the place, but in 1994 he opened his restaurant, The French Laundry, and quickly made it a destination for gourmets and connoisseurs from all over the world. Chef Keller began his career in the kitchen of the Palm Beach club managed by his mother, before traveling to France and working at Guy Savoy and Taillevent, among other similarly lauded places. Roasted chicken, thats a simple thing to do, but its very hard. An American mega-chef, he is as renowned for his culinary skills as he is for his ability to establish a restaurant that is relaxed, yet refined and exciting. We have to be able to give them options but restrict their initial choice to something that we believe they would enjoy. Thomas Keller: When my parents were married, my father was typically stationed somewhere else. 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 have a sous-chef thats responsible for canaps and fish for example. The rabbit screams. For him it was about meat and potatoes. That truly defines our success. I think one of my investors invested 500, and the one who invested the most I think was 80,000. Im the first owner. Theyre going to drive right by our restaurant and stop. It was a restaurant that was extraordinarily consistent. And the kitchen that I was in was nothing like any kitchens that I had been in in America. Thomas Keller: Restaurants are used in so many different ways. Thomas Keller: Probably 17. Youll find a job. And I always say my biggest asset at the time was my ignorance. "At some point you want to say, 'I gave, I gave, I gave now it's time for us,'" he said. Of course, I thought that because of the things that I learned, and because of the ability to execute what I wanted to do, because of my ability to organize a kitchen, I thought that I was invincible. So when you go into a restaurant like The French Laundry and you have to make a choice, its like, What do I choose? Right? And thats how we define success, thats giving people those memories. [13] The former French Laundry Chef de Cuisine Timothy Hollingsworth won the Bocuse d'Or USA semi-finals in 2008, and represented the U.S. in the world finals in January 2009 under Keller's supervision where he placed 6th, equaling the best performance of the U.S. in the contest to date.