Thomas Keller: My parents were divorced when I was young. Of course, when you butt heads with the owner, ultimately the owners going to throw you out and thats what he did. Thomas Keller: La Rive was outside of Catskill. It would seem Chef Thomas Keller would have reason to be satisfied. Oh, what difference does it make? The other one was off on his career. We were very honored. 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. By living frugally on his savings, Keller was able to undertake a series of unpaid apprentice positions in the citys finest restaurants including Guy de Savoy and Taillevent, Michel Pascuet, Gerard Besson, Le Toit de Passy, Chiberta and Le Pr Catalan. So everybody relied on your ability to be organized, to be efficient, to have your job done thoroughly, to understand repetition, rituals, and give them what they needed to do the job. profession evolve as American masters like Thomas Keller rise, and watch the genesis of a "chef nation" as these culinary pioneers crisscross the country to open restaurants and collaborate on special events, and legendary hangouts like Blue Ribbon become social focal points, all as the industry-altering Food Network shimmers on the horizon. What are your core values? And it wasnt something I had thought about before, but within a half an hour, I defined what they were, just because thats how I felt, and thats how most people are. Its really refreshing to see how much thats changed in a short period of time, in 35, 40 years. Pastry Competition. Serge was my only investor (in Rakel) so his life was impacted by the failure of Rakel. I mean its actually performing, and its a function, and its physical. It may be my last chance. I was in my mid-30s. In 2006, the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group continued to expand, adding the family-style restaurant Ad Hoc in Yountville, as well as outposts of Bouchon Bakery in Las Vegas, and Bouchon Bakery & Caf in New York. And I think if I was born with that, I got that from my mother. We went to the local markets all the time. And you know what, it was okay, either one. So he wrote a check to the New York tax authorities to clear us up, which allowed me to get a bank loan. You learn a lot from your mistakes. 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. I learned at that time that persistence is really one of those keys to success. Keller took a $5,000 cash advance on his credit card to retain an attorney who helped him structure a private placement offering. 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. But each day, waking up each day finding some success kept me motivated to the next day. And of course if you were successful, then it was positive feedback and you knew that you did a good job. He loved wine. Thomas Keller: Not really. Otherwise it wasnt going to be good. What culinary values and service values did you learn? The ignorance allowed me to do it. And Im very thankful for all of them. Talk about Rakel. 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. 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. 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. Hes gone. So if you dont want to be repetitive in what youre doing, you probably dont want to really be a cook. 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. 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. I learned skill, knowledge. And he was always the one who was out there getting reservations for the restaurant. [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. We finally achieved what we promised, to reach the podium. Again, we dont know what to expect. But Gourmet magazine picked it up and they thought it was very important. We couldnt get prosciutto di Parma because it just wasnt available in this country so we used a dried Virginia ham, which was overly salty. This was the year before I went to Caf du Parc. I think thats more of what I meant. But you know, just standing there watching this beautiful, elegant, ferocious animal was something that was very captivating. So at the time I was born he was stationed in Camp Pendleton, which is right near Oceanside in California. Those things. Where were their parameters for that? Iconic Dishes They didnt want steak Diane and pommes boulangre. Were committed to one another. You know, this is truly an extraordinary moment in American culinary history. Forget about three. And so it just didnt go with our proteins, it went with everything, because every ingredient that we receive in our restaurants or you receive at home as a consumer, somebody has spent part of their life producing that for us, and we have to be respectful of that and make sure that we are able to nourish ourselves with the food that they supply us. All of them loved the idea but turned me down. 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. [25][26][27], This article is about the chef. No more than three days later (so you don't forget too much), take . Now Ive got this rabbit thats got a broken leg, and Ive got to kill it and dress it. His old friend, Chef Paul Bocuse, presented Keller with the Legions medallion in a 2011 ceremony in New York City. Not everybody knows it like that. You had to have the silverware to the servers so they could set the tables. [7] Keller spent nineteen months raising $1.2million from acquaintances and investors to purchase the restaurant, then re-opened it in 1994. Our first year was 2009. Recently, Keller started marketing a line of signature white Limoges porcelain dinnerware by Raynaud called Hommage Point (in homage to French chef and restaurateur, Fernand Point) that he helped and a collection of silver hollow ware by Christofle. And then you work until 11:00 at night. We have to give them training. Which one do I want? So I went to talk to Bob and I gave him this whole spiel about The French Laundry and here was my business plan. 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. We respond to that by notching up our game. Our job is to mentor and train the next generation of superstars, of franchise players, if you will. It does. And he had great chefs that worked for him. And if you appreciate it, great. A year later your skills your experience were increased, and if you made that same dish, it would be different. You want to go there and you want to have an experience. 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. With Lena Kwak, the research and development chef of The French Laundry, Keller had developed Cup4Cup, a gluten-free flour. A typical person who wants to be a chef might think, Im going to go study with a really good person in Chicago or New York, or even a really good person in Paris. He is one of the most awarded chefs in the world, and The James Beard Foundation has acknowledged him with its Lifetime Achievement Award. I came up. It wasnt until I had an executive coach for a period of time and he asked me, he said, So Thomas You know, one of his first questions to me. And then of course we had foie gras, poached foie gras, warm with turnips spring turnips peas, and a beautiful consomm of duck, rich but at the same time light, right. No. I had committed myself since 1977 to make this my career. At that point you begin overeating because you want to try each one of them. But it wasnt about the team that won gold. 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. So thats what we do. An attorney in Los Angeles named Bob Sutcliffe, who I was introduced to by way of Joachim Splichal, Bob was an attorney who did, on the side, restaurant deals. We got on a plane the next day and came back to New York and of course celebrated again. It was something that made him really comfortable. I wanted to see new things. What do you say to any chef? 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. [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. Thomas Keller: We became friends. He was a man who would travel ten miles to save ten cents on a bar of margarine. Born to a marine drill sergeant and a restaurant manager . Then the hard work of attracting investors began. How did you get started in the restaurant business? My saving grace when I moved to Paris was my friend Serge Raoul, who allowed me to stay at his apartment. 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. Given free rein, he built a smokehouse to cure meats, developed relationships with local livestock purveyors and learned to cook entrails and offal under his old mentor, Roland Henin, who would drop by on occasional weekends. Thomas Keller: It was a junior college. Its not just about going out to dinner. World War II kind of shook that all up. And really, they are the true superstars of our profession. This dish is featured on both the menus at Per Se and The French Laundry, a dish that has stayed on the menus since it was created and one we fully expect to remain there. My first culinary disaster was a recipe from this book, and it just goes to show you the lack of availability of ingredients in our country at the time. I dont want to say the art of repetition, but the ability to respect repetition and embrace it. 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. Soon, he started taking up chef positions at various restaurants in Rhode Island, where he met his mentor and French Master Chef Roland Henin. So I passed by out of curiosity. But nonetheless I built my own little smoker out of an old refrigerator and cured and smoked my own salmon. 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. It was about three-and-a-half years of trying to find somebody in France that was actually going to commit to giving me a job before I actually left America. We did everything. I took a shower like I normally did and I came back to the restaurant. I have to say that period of my life and that period of my career in France was so, so important to who I am today and really helped me understand a lot of things about running a restaurant that have supported my career and my success. I guess you also needed to learn who your customers would be. I spent three summers there: 1980, 81 and 82. I became the first American chef to be at one of the great La Le restaurants in New York City. So if you can give me $5,000, then Ill take on the project, and if its successful, well take our money on the back end. I said, Great. So for the next two weeks I went to the ATM machine, and on my credit card I took out $500 until I got $5,000, and I took $5,000 in cash and gave it to him and he started to modify the business plan and produce a bona fide business plan that I could then present to partners, which we did. They become better than you. So that was really the beginning for us of our success in Northern California. An executive chef would be somebody that would be in a position in a hotel for example, or where there are many different restaurants, and he would be the executive chef over all of the chef de cuisines from each different food and beverage outlet for example. Ren and his wife would come to South Florida in the wintertime because they would close their restaurant, and he was looking for a chef for the following summer and Pierre recommended me, so I moved to Catskill. Its an externship, if you will. I should have read that before. And in his own way he enlightened us in the same way that Alice did in being able to encourage chefs to reconnect to the suppliers that are bringing us those extraordinary ingredients. [1], In April 2009, Keller became engaged to longtime girlfriend and former general manager at the French Laundry, Laura Cunningham. He was a Marine. Our second challenge was in 2011. It had become part of the fabric of restaurants in Napa Valley, and certainly of Yountville. The latest restaurant, "ad hoc", opened in September 2006 in Yountville with a different fixed price comfort food dinner served family style every night. So the lobster Bohemian came out the way you interpreted it at that time. Oh wow, what just happened? Keller started out young in the field of cooking and culinary skills - in fact, his love for cooking surfaced when he once worked as a chef at his mother's restaurant in Florida. And then going to France and in a five-and-a-half hour period producing those two proteins and serving it to 24 international judges. He was always the kind of guy who wanted to save money. Youre only doing it because you love the person and because youre responsible for the person and because thats what you do. Teaches Cooking Techniques I: Vegetables, Pasta, and Eggs. In 2017, Keller and Team USA secured the ultimate victory, winningthe Gold Medal for the United States for the first timeinthecompetitions 30-yearhistory. 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. He took advantage of the traditionalstagiare system in which unpaid apprentices, called stages in English, learn the skills of the classic French kitchen one by one. So we lasted about 12 months. And I could have him pin the medal on my chest. I think one of my investors invested 500, and the one who invested the most I think was 80,000. After his second summer at La Rive, he decided to try his luck in New York City and was hired as chef at Raouls. It changed, whatever the seasons brought, whatever the vegetables were. So I had been focused on working in and Ive chosen French cuisine and haute cuisine as my metier. His restaurant was La Pyramide in Valencin (Vienne), France. Its this whole process, which has really kind of made it really difficult for us to have a proper stage in the kitchen. I think that a restaurant like The French Laundry or Taillevent, any of the great restaurants around the world and certainly there are many, many, many of them are restaurants that are experiences certainly. What an impact that must have had! Its extraordinary what we have available to us and how important our farmers have become. Im not sure which one. It was really only on Saturday and Sunday that I kind of had to support myself through eating and/or entertaining myself. With just a small four-burner stove with one oven it takes you a long time to prepare dinner. Thomas Keller: Well, by the time they were divorced, my two oldest brothers were already out of the house. 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. The chef's central focus these days are the final touches on what he envisions as the physical representation of the Keller legacy: a nearly $11 million renovation of the kitchen and property at . Theres a lot of great chefs out there who can do a lot of great things, but to be consistent 300 days a year lunch and dinner over and over and over and over again is really for me what defines greatness. When the hotel was sold, Keller clashed with the new owners and found himself again at liberty. The same year, Keller published a book of family-style recipes, Ad Hoc at Home, which spent six weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. And Rakel was in an area that wasnt really supported by a community or a neighborhood around it. I wonder where that ambition came from to be the best, and why didnt you decide to go to school for that? I became the chef of Raouls, which was, at the time an outpost in what became SoHo on Prince Street, and it was a classic, classic, French bistro in every way, and it was wonderful. So it was really I was in a comfortable position in my living quarters, and I wasnt really spending a lot of money. He holds an honorary Doctor's in Culinary Arts from The Culinary Institute of America. And I walked on the property. The businessmen who had constituted the base of their clientele went looking for lower-price, more casual dining options until the economy recovered. We all have our own core values, and I think that we can identify them when pressed to find them. He loved food. He liked that. 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. It all goes back to the rabbit. Best Restaurant in the World (French Laundry). Youve mentioned the value of consistency, but nothing says it like that. I mean that became the catch phrase. Not even butter, and then he would buy 20 pounds of it to store in his freezer so that he could have it whenever he needed it. Keller began his career as a professional cook at the Palm Beach Yacht Club in 1974. During summers, he worked as a cook in Rhode Island. I had only been there for a year, but I was determined. I thought, If Im going to do this, I need to do it now. And I went back to Los Angeles. I was a year-and-a-half younger, therefore I had to be set in front of the dishwasher. The chef has recently come under fire for praising a major Donald Trump donor. It was kind of this magical place, and I just felt an instant connection to it. 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. Was it a restaurant that was progressive and contemporary? One summer, he was discovered by French-born Master Chef Roland Henin and was tasked to cook staff meals at The Dunes Club. Thomas Keller: I wish I could say there were, but no. Ill dye it green. So, food color came out, we dyed the pasta green. Were they going to come from France? You had to sweep the floor at these specific times. So when they were divorced, that was her path. And still, it wasnt necessarily something that was recognized as a true profession. And you know, waste became a really important part of that learning experience, making sure that you know what? I was thinking that, I dont know, fireworks. I wasnt convinced that I was just going to travel to France and knock on somebodys door, but in reality thats actually what happened. The rabbit screams. I mean an extraordinary chef. And to keep herself busy, and of course to supply some income for the family, she worked in restaurants. 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. [14][15][16] On describing his reasons for accepting the Bocuse d'Or Team USA presidency, Keller stated, "When Chef [Paul] Bocuse calls you on the phone and says hed like you to be president of the American team, you say, Oui, chef. Over the next few years the restaurant earned numerous awards, including from the James Beard Foundation, gourmet magazines, the Mobil Guide (five stars), and the Michelin Guide (three stars). You opened your own restaurant in New York in 1986. Very simple. 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. The sandwich resembles a typical BLT, with the addition of a fried egg. You work through service. The California-based chef has won nearly every culinary award imaginable; his cookbooks line the shelf of other chefs and passionate home. And all you have to do is believe in yourself, be patient, be persistent. America had competed since the beginning but never even came close to the podium. If I wasnt, I learned it from her. So I went to different banks, several banks. Testosterone is raging and youre with all these its a group. 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. Learn techniques for cooking vegetables and eggs and making pastas from scratch from the award-winning chef and proprietor of The French Laundry. Thomas Keller: One of his favorite things to do was to sit in the parking lot early in the morning when our purveyors would bring their deliveries in. We had Johnson and Wales. [24], Keller currently has three online cooking classes at Masterclass.com, pursuing his belief in teaching. It was an emotional moment. And if theyre not better than you, then you havent done a very good job. What does the American Dream mean to you? Do you relate your attraction to the discipline and camaraderie of the kitchen to your fathers career as a Marine? I break its leg. In his teenage summers, he worked at the Palm Beach Yacht Club starting as a dishwasher and quickly moving up to cook.