It was a narrative. And he was always the one who was out there getting reservations for the restaurant. Could you tell us how that came about? It was poorly lit, and I had to arrive at work the next morning in the kitchen downstairs at 5:30 and they would show me what to do. I had been reading about this restaurant for years. 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. And he agreed to do it. Most of the kitchens that I worked in always have the chef, the sous-chefs, the chef de parties, the commis, and thats a very hierarchical system where everybody looks at the chef for the direction, the sous-chefs to implement it, you know, the chef de cuisines to perform it, and the commis to support it. So as a young boy, this tiger was in this massive well, I dont want to say penned-in cage. I wanted to travel. It comes out in a beautiful pan. Of course his son went to school here in the Culinary Institute of America and now lives in America. 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. June 13, 2007 FOR someone who works in a restaurant, watching a rat try to become a chef might seem like just another day at work. I had left Checkers. For movie audiences, a rat with culinary aspirations might be. And if we do those three things right, what happens? But it was such a wonderful moment that lasted for days afterwards, because you had all the leftovers. Returning to Florida, he opened his first restaurant, the Cobbley Nob, with two partners in West Palm Beach. This was the year before I went to Caf du Parc. You had to check the soap every three hours. Thomas Keller: I was working at a restaurant. 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. Thomas Keller: Thank you. Ive had some extraordinary honors in my life. On a 1992 visit to the Napa Valley, he was introduced to Don and Sally Schmitt, owners of a small restaurant in Yountville, a small town in the heart of the wine-growing region. 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. We want to make sure that we pay respect to them. In past interviews youve speculated that perhaps some people are born with a gene for hospitality. And yet you have risen to the highest of stature of culinary greatness. And its up to that organization or that chef to define what youll do. Its not just about going out to dinner. Tell us about the Thanksgiving dinner you do at Bouchon. It was part of our culture, part of our philosophy, part of the philosophy that we had embraced from Don and Sally Schmitt. It was because of the excitement of working with a team of peers and that physical activity of being on a team. Favorite Restaurant Restaurant Experts' Poll, Outstanding Wine Service Award, James Beard Foundation, 2001, Outstanding Service Award, James Beard Foundation, 2003. Thomas Keller: It was my second failure in a restaurant. Made him a strawberry shortcake for dessert. And I think thats what made the difference for me is not having to focus on the foundation of cooking, but be able to understand what made these restaurants great and understanding that Taillevent, which was probably the single most influential for me, a great restaurant. I became a chef there and moved to Los Angeles. I had committed myself since 1977 to make this my career. He is also featured in "My Last Supper" by Melanie Dunea. What was school like for you? Keller and Cunningham opened a more casual establishment, Bistro Bouchon, in Yountville in 1998. 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. So he reached in the cage, pulls a rabbit out, both legs, has one of those little baseball clubs, knocks it on its head, pins the rabbit to the side of the barn, slits its throat, dresses the rabbit in about five minutes. 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? Each time you made it it was yours, it was not necessarily his. Thomas Keller: In 1977 I met my mentor, Roland Henin, who really enlightened me about what cooks do: we nurture people. 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 realize them on your own and that is really important as well. 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. In the early 70s, when I really started cooking, for me it was really about the process. As a dishwasher you do the same thing over and over and over and over again. Jonathan Benno was our chef at the time. Pastry Competition. Were they going to come from France? In France, Keller formed a friendship with the legendary chef Paul Bocuse, sponsor of the Bocuse dOr competition, the Olympics of international cooking. 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. Did you commit to purchasing it before you raised the money? Could you tell us that story? Theres 12 rabbits in the cage and hes explaining to me in broken English how to kill the rabbit. As much as I would have appreciated and certainly had deep respect to go to France and to receive it at the lyse, I knew right away that I would prefer to have somebody else pin that medal on my chest. And of course the next morning he called me and he told me that The French Laundry again had received the highest recognition from Michelin Guide, three stars. Visitors to Napa brought word back to San Francisco, where favorable mention in the press drew interest from even farther away. When the hotel was sold, Keller clashed with the new owners and found himself again at liberty. So our job is to make sure that were choosing those ingredients of the moment. The fourth discipline I learned was the repetition, right? So we added a vegetable menu, which was seven courses, and we added a tasting menu, which was nine courses. He was very, very fascinated with cooking. Thomas Keller: Yeah. Thomas Keller: No. So I went to different banks, several banks. Our second challenge was in 2011. So between private placement, commercial bank loan, and an SBA loan over the period, and with the help of Don and Sally Schmitt and Bob Sutcliffe, my attorney, as well as the 52 partners, we were able to put together enough money to buy The French Laundry, and on May 1, 1994 we finally closed on the deal. Sometimes simplicity is best. So on Thanksgiving day at Bouchon, thats what we do. And typically in the day she would work at the Officers Club as a hostess or a waitress, working her way up to understanding how to manage a restaurant. In June 2019, Keller became the first U.S. inductee into The Master Chefs of France, the oldest savory chef association in the world. And he came in, he snuck in. Its always, Oui, chef. Yes. I had partnered with two male flight attendants who wanted to open a restaurant. 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. They ran it in one of their last issues. And we thought this location was just like the perfect location. On January 26, 2004, Keller opened his restaurant Bouchon in Las Vegas. 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. Thomas Keller: We used to think about luxury as choices, right. In 2013 we raised to ninth. We fell to tenth. 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. We are the first chefs, first American chefs in America to receive three stars. So I thought, What better place to celebrate than Taillevent, my first three-star work experience? So I called Taillevent, and of course Jean-Claude Vrinat said, Please, welcome. The chef has recently come under fire for praising a major Donald Trump donor. It was here he discovered his passion for cooking and perfection of the hollandaise sauce. So it was really I was in a comfortable position in my living quarters, and I wasnt really spending a lot of money. French kitchens are very delineated, arent they? So there were five of them. And of course the lunch and dinner in the same day, it really worked for me. The Cobbley Nob has to do with woodworking, because one of our partners was an amateur he was a hobbyist.