What is the chef cooking today? You had to check the soap every three hours. Born to a marine drill sergeant and a restaurant manager . Start with your all-time favorite recipe from your favorite cookbook. And although I was very young, one of the things I do remember about Camp Pendleton is one of the regiments had for a mascot a tiger. There werent really a lot of people who had aspirations of becoming a chef. 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. It was in watching his. Thomas Keller stands in front of the original exterior wall of the French Laundry in Yountville. 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. And again, a coincidence that Paul Bocuse was going to be in America that March or that April. Thats just what you do. Well, it was covered with dust, but it was covered with soot, with coal dust. Were committed to one another. 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. No. If I wasnt, I learned it from her. In everything that we do, we have to understand that our expectations have to be of the highest. You know, learn how to cut brunoise, learn how to peel an onion, learn how to slice. But the next summer, when spring came around, Ren called me and asked me if I wanted to come back to La Rive, and because that was such a bucolic experience for me, it was so familiar, they were like my second parents, I moved back to Catskill for that third summer. Its this whole process, which has really kind of made it really difficult for us to have a proper stage in the kitchen. I spent three summers there. The demographics were very important in that process, which we just totally threw out the window, or we just miscalculated. And Raphael was run just like the restaurants ran in France. 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. They feel the responsibility to them. The following year, Michelin inspectors came to the West Coast and gave The French Laundry three stars as well. No one told you those things. They had saved their money and they opened a restaurant called the Cobbley Nob. It was a restaurant that was extraordinarily consistent. What did you have in mind? Youve mentioned the value of consistency, but nothing says it like that. 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. She served me one of the best sandwiches I ever had, which was beef tongue. We did everything. Keller is the first and only American-born chef to hold multiple three-star ratings from the prestigious Michelin Guide and is the first American male chef to be designated a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, Frances paramount honorary order. And about midnight he finished about midnight and he came back to the kitchen and I was standing in the box in our little office in the kitchen, the chefs office, and I was cleaning, doing my nightly cleaning rituals. Thomas Keller: The first had an odd name, so dont laugh. It wasnt a difficult decision for me. What happens? 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. I explained my intentions. The first time U.S.A. is there, Im standing at the pass in Pauls kitchen, Im standing next to him and Im just telling him how proud I am, how much I love what hes done, how much I love him. Thomas Keller: Thank you. So they do this extraordinary blini there. And rituals are very, very, very important. 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. 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. 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. Jonathan Benno was our chef at the time. And then you work until 11:00 at night. Its like, Wow, I can choose any one of these pillows. But which one really is the best? He grew up in the Depression, was a Marine for 23 years of his life. Thomas Keller: Restaurants are used in so many different ways. He loved chefs. We just received three stars. It was in the era of Chez Panisse, you know. "At some point you want to say, 'I gave, I gave, I gave now it's time for us,'" he said. Of course, when it tries to jump forward, Im holding a leg. Michelin was coming to America and we didnt know what was going to happen. 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. Taking his most . Of course we want to make our restaurants better, but our overarching goal is to elevate the standards of our profession, and we do that by training, by mentoring, by giving the skills and knowledge to those next generations, so that they can not only help us in our restaurants but then go out and be impactful in other restaurants, and of course hopefully one day open their own restaurants. He wanted to have chicken, barbeque chicken. Double boiler, single boiler? It was not very appetizing, but you already made the commitment to do it, right, so you had to follow through and you had to serve it and you had to take kind of the feedback, the critical feedback, and just say, Okay, yeah, I made a mistake. And really mistakes are such important building blocks for success. Thomas Keller: Well, by the time they were divorced, my two oldest brothers were already out of the house. He was the first hotelier to really bring in a great restaurant with a great chef and that was Bradley Ogden. With Paul Bocuses son Jerome and their fellow chef Daniel Boulud, Keller founded the Bocuse dOr USA Foundation (Mentor) in 2008 to inspire culinary excellence in young professionals and preserve the traditions and quality of classic cuisine in America. Keller and the Bocuse family hoped to see young American chefs compete successfully in this competition, but a number of years would pass before American chefs would reach the winners circle. When I wrote The French Laundry Cookbook, it was an important story for me to tell. How did you come by that vision? It was fascinating, and again certainly we were very proud and honored. As you mentioned earlier, the 1980s and 90s were a fascinating time for great food in California. It was a new restaurant with a chef named Pierre Latuberne and Pierres wife, Anne-Marie. Best Restaurant in the World (French Laundry). TIME magazine named him Americas Best Chef in 2001. So if you dont want to be repetitive in what youre doing, you probably dont want to really be a cook. And there was another friend of mine in Los Angeles who taught me how to use a computer. And of course the lunch and dinner in the same day, it really worked for me. 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. 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. Theyre working on the same preparation, the same compositions, the same dishes, the same recipes day in and day out for that entire year period. My sights to go to France and work in specific restaurants were already defined. The idea of service is so pertinent to both worlds, military and culinary. Where else would you aspire to go if it wasnt the best? We won silver. Michelin came in 2006. Hello, my name is You know, I have this idea of and Id like you to consider it. And he had great chefs that worked for him. He enjoyed the teamwork of a restaurant kitchen and resolved to become a professional cook. Its popularity waned as the stock market bottomed out and at the end of the 1980s, Keller left, unwilling to compromise his style of cooking to simple bistro fare. We made an instant connection, and we agreed on a price, and I was going to buy The French Laundry. So we have to our expectations in our kitchen, in our restaurant, in our service. She became a restaurant manager. A year later your skills your experience were increased, and if you made that same dish, it would be different. How Thomas Keller's Impact is Changing the Restaurant Industry Is there a connection between the fact that you got a book of recipes from the worlds great restaurants and then decided to go and apprentice in France, in the worlds great restaurants? Maybe it was a plan D as an olive oil purveyor. I had now failed in two restaurants and a chef de cuisineposition or executive chef position at Checkers Hotel. Its going into someone elses kitchen and actually becoming part of that kitchen. Just go. 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. If you kept after it year after year after year, that dish evolved into something else. Rakel was in an area called Hudson Square in Manhattan, not too far from SoHo, not too far from the Village, but an area which was unheard of, and so we found a space there. But more than any of that, we realized a great burden of responsibility, because Ruth, who is an expert in her field, somebody who we all look to, somebody who we all respect, has now called us, literally, the best place or the most exciting place to eat in America. 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 Jean Luc Naret, who is the director of Michelin. Famous Restaurants Chef Thomas Keller is renowned for his famous California and New York restaurants, including The French Laundry, Per Se, Bouchon, and Ad Hoc. I had much more control over it. We changed every day. 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. 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. Who was going to receive one star, two stars, three stars? Im sure my mother bought it for me because of the quality of the book, not necessarily the quality of the content. Now Ive got this rabbit thats got a broken leg, and Ive got to kill it and dress it. Working on the film Spanglish, Keller designed and taught star Adam Sandler to cook what is often called "the world's greatest sandwich", as a plausible example of what a talented bachelor gourmet might cook for himself. He loved wine. Were all in it together, and we all have to support one another. And during my time working for him and of course I was just a lowly cook so Im not sure why I was having this kind of conversations with him but the conversations were really about cooks and our career and our profession. I was a year-and-a-half younger, therefore I had to be set in front of the dishwasher. 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. I dont know if theres a hospitality gene as much as theres a nurturing gene. Its an extraordinary event, extraordinary undertaking. So at that time, cooking wasnt as recognized or as popular as it is today. But each day, waking up each day finding some success kept me motivated to the next day. And of course then to finish the meal was the famous marquise au chocolat, the chocolate marquise with pistachio sauce, something that I made almost every night during my time at Taillevent. A bowl, or whatever the serviceware was, you had a piece set up on the counter, on the drain board, where they were supposed to put it. Theres also the idea of a restaurant meal as a special event, rather than just getting something to eat. Its the stamina, the commitment, the dedication to the craft is unparalleled. If Im going to raise money from a lot of different people so it doesnt impact if Im not successful, its not going to impact their lives. So that was the process with the private placement business plan. It was part of our culture, part of our philosophy, part of the philosophy that we had embraced from Don and Sally Schmitt. Jean-Luc Naret was coming to San Francisco himself because he wanted to have an after party to celebrate to introduce the Michelin Guide in 2007. I wanted to have a large group of people, because of my experience at Rakel. Just go over there. Those were things that he was familiar with so and just telling stories. It was like it was it just shocked us all. We converted the restaurant into Caf Rakel. You have chef plumbers. So I had to go back to Serge because I didnt have any money, and I had to ask Serge to satisfy the tax lien, which my portion of it was considerable. So he worked with a couple chefs in helping them raise money, organize their businesses. In 1999, Thomas Keller published The French Laundry Cookbook, which he considers his definitive book on cuisine. Thats what he wanted. And he agreed to do it. Following the failure of the Cobbley Nob, Keller became sous-chef at Caf du Parc in West Palm Beach. 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. So that was immediate critical feedback. Everybody became more frugal during that time, as they do always in times of uneasiness and disruption in our economic climate. Our job is to mentor and train the next generation of superstars, of franchise players, if you will. Keller served as a consultant on the feature film Spanglish, and in collaboration with restaurant designer Adam D. Tihany, created K + T, a collection of silver hardware and cocktail ware for Christofle Silversmiths. I became the first American chef to be at one of the great La Le restaurants in New York City. So he called his son, who then called his best friend, Daniel Boulud, who called me, and said the three of us are going to form a foundation to support the competition, to support a U.S. team in competing in France. It was camaraderie. 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. And you know, waste became a really important part of that learning experience, making sure that you know what? Keller spent the next three summers at La Rive in Catskill, where he learned to source produce locally, growing many of his own vegetables, and even trying to kill and dress small game, an experience that gave him greater respect for those who produce the food we eat. We try to limit the choices, relieve the anxiety, and give somebody an experience that then, when they leave the restaurant, its memorable. Thomas Keller: In 1977 I met my mentor, Roland Henin, who really enlightened me about what cooks do: we nurture people. You prepared it in the way you could at that time with the ingredients that you had, and the knowledge and skills that you had at the moment, and it evolved with you. Chefs use science to develop their food preparation techniques and invent new methods of cooking. 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. 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). So he wrote a check to the New York tax authorities to clear us up, which allowed me to get a bank loan. And I walked on the property. It was on West 45th Street in West Palm Beach, right next door to the jai-alai fronton. He migrated towards cooking much earlier than I did. I was also developing my relationship with farmers, with foragers, with gardeners, with fishermen from around the area. What did you learn working at Taillevent? The chef was highly regarded, three Michelin stars. Of course you never know those things when youre doing it. And so that was over 400 people I called during that period of time. 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. You want to go there and you want to have an experience. 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. 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. So you can see there was a wide range of investment. I believe in you, but I need something. AllRightsReserved. You started quite young, didnt you? How old were you when you received it? 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. On behalf of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Chef Paul Bocuse presented Keller as a Chevalier of The French Legion of Honor in 2011 in recognition of his lifelong commitment to the traditions of French cuisine and his role in elevating cooking in America. Chef Thomas Keller is renowned for his culinary skills and high standards. The first and most important thing, he said, was to make sure that when you reach into the cage, that you grab both the hind legs simultaneously. I wonder where that ambition came from to be the best, and why didnt you decide to go to school for that? Iconic Dishes Out of those 400, 52 agreed to write a check, for a lot of different reasons, for any amount of money. I could go anywhere in the world and be a cook. Back to the first cookbook you received as a gift from your mom. 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. That year it won three International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) awards for Cookbook of the Year, Julia Child "First Cookbook" Award, and Design Award. He said, I just want to tell you, youre going to get a phone call tomorrow and youre going to be really happy. So I went home. Paul Bocuse was a commis at his restaurant. We all learned a great deal from it. Of course, when you butt heads with the owner, ultimately the owners going to throw you out and thats what he did. Oh, what difference does it make? Thomas Keller: We began of course with caviar. 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. Thomas Keller: In 1992 I visited the Napa Valley from Los Angeles. As a consultant for All-Clad Metalcrafters, Keller advised on the creation of the All-Clad Copper Core Bocuse DOr Cookware. And in San Francisco we had Herb Caen. 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. So during the Korean War he was there for two and a half years.