1. Thomas Keller: In 1977 I met my mentor, Roland Henin, who really enlightened me about what cooks do: we nurture people. And make sure that I had paid attention to how I cooked it. And I thought that was just brilliant in the way he wrote that book. Then youd have a sous-chef. Thomas Keller: I studied philosophy actually. He combined his thorough knowledge of French tradition with his own flair for humor and imagination, offering his guests a seemingly endless series of exquisite small plates, such as a miniature ice cream cone of salmon tartare, or a small serving of oysters and caviar resting on a bed of tapioca. The highest priority for us is that we are able to reach our own expectations. Thomas Keller is the first American chef to receive consecutive three-star Michelin ratings for two restaurants. They believed in me. I was thinking that, I dont know, fireworks. He wanted America to have a better representation at the Bocuse dOr. Had they not, I wouldnt be here today. 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. The Spanglish sandwich", "Chef Thomas Keller on Why Food Isn't The Point Of a Restaurant", "Bay Area flavors food tale: For its new film 'Ratatouille,' Pixar explored our obsession with cuisine", "Thomas Keller - Teaches Cooking Techniques I: Vegetables, Pasta, and Eggs at masterclass.com", "Thomas Keller - Teaches Cooking Techniques II: Meats, Stocks, and Sauces", "Thomas Keller - Teaches Cooking Techniques III: Seafood, Sous Vide, and Desserts", "The James Beard Foundation Awards Presents 1996 Winners", "The 1998 Bon Apptit Awards: Chef of the Year", "The S. Pellegrino 50 Best Restaurants in the World, 2003", "S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants, 2004", "S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants, 2005", "S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants, 2006", "S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants, 2007", "S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants, 2008", "Winners Announced For 2005 James Beard Foundation Awards", "Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor for Thomas Keller", "American chef Keller to be admitted into French Legion of Honor", "Thomas Keller The S.Pellegrino Lifetime Achievement Award Winner 2012", "Thomas Keller wins Lifetime Achievement Award", "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement", Google Authors: Thomas Keller: May 19, 2009, 60 Minutes: Inside Thomas Keller's Restaurants: November 20, 2011, 60 Minutes: Visiting the Theater of the Mouth: February 11, 2009, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Keller&oldid=1142852191. And then you have other sous-chefs, which would be responsible for specific groups of chef de parties. It was because of the excitement of working with a team of peers and that physical activity of being on a team. So now we increased our production from 40 items to 60 items. 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. I dont know if theres a hospitality gene as much as theres a nurturing gene. My mother passed away in 1982 so I had gone to France in 1983 but my father was, I have to say. Keller took a $5,000 cash advance on his credit card to retain an attorney who helped him structure a private placement offering. On January 26, 2004, Keller opened his restaurant Bouchon in Las Vegas. 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. 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. 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 . Were you a good student? 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. 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. 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. We did so many different things. Yes. We respond to that by notching up our game. So at that time, cooking wasnt as recognized or as popular as it is today. 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. Its really, thats where I learned about the idea of being a team as it relates to a sports franchise. What did you learn working at Taillevent? I learned how to share with them. The chef has recently come under fire for praising a major Donald Trump donor. And he sat us down right at the first table. The kitchen was my comfort zone, and I was very successful in the kitchen, but outside of that I wasnt so much so. 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. It was familiar to him. He joined forces with his friend Serge Raoul to open a restaurant whose name combined the first letters of the partners last names: Rakel. Thomas Keller: Yeah. The peas were just so perfect. In 2004 they opened a Bouchon Bakery & Caf in Las Vegas and a new fine dining establishment, Per Se, in New York City. Thomas Keller: I was working at a restaurant. Theres many ways to entertain yourself without spending a lot of money. Where else would you aspire to go if it wasnt the best? I learned skill, knowledge. Thomas Keller: Not really. Youre American. The commitment they make to doing the same talk about doing the same thing every day. But each day, waking up each day finding some success kept me motivated to the next day. "At some point you want to say, 'I gave, I gave, I gave now it's time for us,'" he said. Thomas Keller: Restaurants are used in so many different ways. Lets go back to the beginning. You have truly defined haute cuisine in this country. Thats what really we want to be able to instill, to teach our young staff is that the person standing next to you is your colleague. 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. I wasnt convinced that I was just going to travel to France and knock on somebodys door, but in reality thats actually what happened. We had an extraordinary dinner. Chef Bios: Thomas Keller. But of course there was no recipe for the spinach pasta. I didnt recognize it until much later in my career, but I realized it and I understand that was part of the foundation of why I became a good cook and ultimately was able to become a good chef. Or we could stay in Paris, maybe get a phone call, but miss the celebration in New York. That was something that was fascinating. Keller's mother was a restaurateur who employed Thomas as help when her cook got sick. 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. After World War II the men came back and the women stayed at work and that spawned the convenience food generation, which was us. Take the lobster, do this, this, and this, and add this and this and you have this is what lobster Bohemian is. Tell us about the Thanksgiving dinner you do at Bouchon. I was four or five years old when my parents were divorced. The parmesan was the grated kind that you found in the green shaker. I wanted to see new things. In 2004 he published "The Bouchon Cookbook," although he gives most of the credit to Bouchon chef Jeffrey Cerciello. 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. Thomas Keller: Well, we all learn that. I knew I could cook. Thomas Keller: When my parents were married, my father was typically stationed somewhere else. With more than. Every day after school hed come home and watch Graham Kerr or Julia Child. How Thomas Keller's Impact is Changing the Restaurant Industry And were watching Philips name being inserted into the walkway that leads up to the front door: Philip Tessier, U.S.A.. Theres now 13 rows of gold, silver, bronze plaques with peoples names on them. It comes out in a beautiful pan. You just never know. Chefs use science to develop their food preparation techniques and invent new methods of cooking. I learned the technique was important. It certainly is very gratifying to see the interest now. We did everything. I mean an extraordinary chef. In 2015 we finally reached the podium, the first time the Americans have ever been on the podium in France. And thats how we define success, thats giving people those memories. So I went to talk to Bob and I gave him this whole spiel about The French Laundry and here was my business plan. So I set my sights high. Not everybody has that much awareness of it, but for our point of view, the sense of national pride that we have in what we do, the commitment that we have during that two-year process of training, choosing and training those young chefs because it takes a year to train them. And that was a wonderful environment, very familiar, very small. I mean its actually performing, and its a function, and its physical. 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. In the process I did really I wasnt really privy to the process that you go through but I remember receiving the letter from the President of France telling me that he was proud of the work that I had done in my field and that I deserved to be recognized by the people of France and to receive the Medallion de Legion dHonneur was their way of expressing their gratitude and asking me if I would like to be hosted at the lyse Palace in Paris later that year to receive the medal from him, or to receive the medal from an officer of the Legion dHonneur that was of a higher rank than I was. D'Artagnan client since 1994. homas Keller needs no introduction. With Lena Kwak, the research and development chef of The French Laundry, Keller had developed Cup4Cup, a gluten-free flour. After the failure of Rakel, you persisted with haute cuisine but you moved to Los Angeles. And then you work until 11:00 at night. Thomas Keller: Every morning there was a ritual where I would wake up and I would call my list of people asking them for money. And I think thats very important, certainly in a kitchen as well as other places in many professions where theres this instant command response. It was in watching his. There was one farmer who supplied me with my rabbits every week. We were very honored. 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. So you always had a bread and butter plate in one spot, a service plate in one spot. I mean it was such an emotional experience I didnt know what to do, because the rabbit screamed so loud that Paulette, the wife of the owner, came out of the house their house was just maybe 50 yards away thinking something had happened. It was really about price points. 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. 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. Expectations do get in the way. For other people named Thomas Keller, see, Restaurant Magazine list of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World, International Association of Culinary Professionals, Restaurant Magazine's Top 50 Restaurants of the World, "Thomas Keller and The French Laundry Awards", "Le chef amricain Thomas Keller reoit la Lgion dhonneur", "MICHELIN Guide Reveals Inaugural Florida Selection", "The Thomas Keller Interview, II: On Benno, Bouchon and Brooklyn", "Prix fixe to the people: Thomas Keller goes populist with his new restaurant, Ad Hoc", "TK SET - Thomas Keller Limited Edition Set", Competing at the Bocuse dOr: Team USAs Unbeatable Recipes, Chef Timothy Hollingsworth Wants to Bring American Pressure to the Bocuse dOr, High Hopes for American Team in Bocuse dOr Cooking Competition, "Chef Thomas Keller:'Preparing myself to let go', "75 notable NYC restaurants and bars that permanently closed since 2020", "French Laundry chef talks about celebrity life", "Who cooked that up? So you have chef electricians. But it wasnt because I wanted to have a career in the profession, in the culinary profession. So typically, artisanal work or work that youre doing with your hands, manual labor, would have a chef. What does the American Dream mean to you? Thomas Keller: That they do. And certainly receiving the Legion of Honor from President Sarkozy was beyond anything I could ever dream of. And it just didnt happen. He studied briefly at Palm Beach Junior College but knew his real education would come by working at the best restaurants he could find. Youve mentioned the value of consistency, but nothing says it like that. Its like, Wow, I can choose any one of these pillows. But which one really is the best? It had become part of the fabric of restaurants in Napa Valley, and certainly of Yountville. Thomas Keller: I think its that way in most classy kitchens. 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. The demographics were very important in that process, which we just totally threw out the window, or we just miscalculated. And it was a small kitchen. Keller loved the location, and thought the little town in the heart of Californias wine country would be the perfect place to practice the fusion of tradition and innovation he had long imagined. We changed every day. You have received the highest rating in Michelin, three stars. And I was just It was emotional. He provided an introduction or foreword to The Vineyard Kitchen: Menus Inspired by the Seasons by Maria Helm Sinskey, "Happy in the Kitchen" by Michel Richard, "Indulge: 100 Perfect Desserts" by Claire Clark (head pastry chef at The French Laundry), the new publication of "Ma Gastronomie" by Fernand Point, "Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing" by Micheal Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. And rituals are very, very, very important. Each time you made it it was yours, it was not necessarily his. He had dinner at The French Laundry and he wrote three paragraphs about The French Laundry. Thomas Keller: Those were two of the greatest moments of my life. [2] His restaurants currently hold eight Michelin stars in total: three at Per Se, three at The French Laundry, one at Bouchon, and one at The Surf Club Restaurant.[3]. To expand his knowledge, he joined Compagnons du Devoir, an artisans' organization that offers technical education through tours and apprenticeships with masters. The success has motivated me and propelled me forward. I was questioning my ability as a chef. I spent three summers there. No one told you those things. We had some in New York City, mostly in New York I would say. 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. 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 had saved their money and they opened a restaurant called the Cobbley Nob. A California native, and a renowned perfectionist, Chef Thomas Keller is apprentice-trained, and one of America's most well-known and successful chefs the only American-born one with two restaurants that have received three stars from the Michelin Guide. Its the stamina, the commitment, the dedication to the craft is unparalleled. Once again, things got off to a good start, and Keller enjoyed making friends with colleagues in the West Coast restaurant scene. 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. What It Takes is an audio podcast produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: public service, science and exploration, sports, technology, business, arts and humanities, and justice. Of course we never knew who their inspectors were, but who were their inspectors? You know, jai-alai is a sport. Teaches Cooking Techniques I: Vegetables, Pasta, and Eggs. We have to be able to give them options but restrict their initial choice to something that we believe they would enjoy. You were actually born on the West Coast. Thomas Keller: It was a very difficult time in New York City. Thomas Keller: I learned that I needed to be a lot more responsible to the amount of money I spent on my products and how to use them. So it was one menu every day. 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. We all have our own core values, and I think that we can identify them when pressed to find them. Thomas Keller: The best restaurants that you were aware of if you picked up a Michelin Guide, if you picked up The New York Times, even New York Magazine or any magazine that was either a travel or food magazine, or had a food section in the newspaper at that time, were always talking about the great restaurants in France and the great chefs. All of them loved the idea but turned me down. I mean were the mothership, were the foundation of Thomas Keller Restaurant Group and certainly the inspiration for Per Se. [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. Theyre going to drive right by our restaurant and stop. 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. Thomas Keller: Per Se opened in 2004. All the men went to the war and the women went to work. Jan Birnbaum was the first. [6], Following the split with his partner at Rakel, Keller took various consultant and chef positions in New York and Los Angeles. Thomas Keller: Fortunately, for those three years I was trying to find somebody to commit to giving me a job, I was also saving my money. You come back at 5:30. [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. So if you dont want to be repetitive in what youre doing, you probably dont want to really be a cook. Fortunately, my persistence paid off and I had eight different stages in observation, permission to have observation at a restaurant. So I was focused on that. The first half of the book was a book of stories, a book about his restaurant, his experience, his guests, his wife, his team, his chef. We had The Greenbrier, which had a qualified externship program. I had been fired from another. As a consultant for All-Clad Metalcrafters, Keller advised on the creation of the All-Clad Copper Core Bocuse DOr Cookware. 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. And Herb always wrote maybe two or three sentences about an experience he had that he wanted to share. 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. And if theyre not better than you, then you havent done a very good job. 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.