why did thomas keller become a chef

It was really only on Saturday and Sunday that I kind of had to support myself through eating and/or entertaining myself. It could be as short as two paragraphs. Theres bronze, silver and gold. 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. We have to have an American president. I said okay. No more than three days later (so you don't forget too much), take . 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. And if theyre not better than you, then you havent done a very good job. And it was my expectations that got in the way of my experience. So your mom raised all six children by herself? Under Henin's study, Keller learned the fundamentals of classical French cooking. I needed to have the knowledge and the skill in order to prepare it. 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. 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. And the level of the success or the result of the recipe was based on your current ability. So it was really I was in a comfortable position in my living quarters, and I wasnt really spending a lot of money. Today we have executive chefs as well. Had I known everything that I was going to have to do over the course of the next 18 months, I would have given up right away. I was already cooking now for four years. You never say no to the chef, right? 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. It was a perfect meal to celebrate a perfect moment with the best people in the world. When I was in South Florida, I was working in a restaurant called the Caf du Parc. Thomas Keller: Yeah. So in 1980, I planted my first garden. Returning to Florida, he opened his first restaurant, the Cobbley Nob, with two partners in West Palm Beach. Best Restaurant in the World (French Laundry). Certainly, working in French kitchens was the same for me. 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. It does. The California-based chef has won nearly every culinary award imaginable; his cookbooks line the shelf of other chefs and passionate home. Were dedicated to one another. And he came in, he snuck in. Why didnt I choose to go to school? Chef Keller led a team from the U.S. to its first-ever gold medal in the Bocuse d'Or, a prestigious biannual competition that is regarded as the Olympics of the culinary world. [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]. And that training goes on not for two weeks or two months, but that training goes on the entire time that theyre with us. 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. After two years, he moved to Rhode Island, working first as chef de partie at the Clarke Cooke House, and the following summer at the Dunes Club in Narragansett. I enjoyed it. You just never know. Thomas Keller: Herb Caen was a great writer. The trio had hoped that their proximity to a sports arena would provide them with a steady flow of business, but the arenas patrons were not interested in the sophisticated fare he was offering, and the restaurant closed its doors. I learned at that time that persistence is really one of those keys to success. Mr. Keller thinks, at least for him, a change may be in order. What does the American Dream mean to you? As you mentioned earlier, the 1980s and 90s were a fascinating time for great food in California. But not only did I have to raise money from private partners, I had to buy the property. Hes gone. Of course it became one of those stories that, if it was today, it would have gone viral, but back in those days we didnt have what we have today. The new restaurant got off to a good start, but the stock market crash of 1987 cut deeply into their business. So, we werent away from it for too long, but long enough that so many of us forgot how important it was. As important as Ruths was, Herbs was the same, the Schmitts. Im very proud to have been part of this. What was school like for you? 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. His old friend, Chef Paul Bocuse, presented Keller with the Legions medallion in a 2011 ceremony in New York City. You have chef plumbers. 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. You made him a real last supper, didnt you? As a dishwasher you do the same thing over and over and over and over again. And we were so proud. I wanted to have a large group of people, because of my experience at Rakel. And I arrived at the front door and a large matronly woman met me and she was very harsh, and she took me up to my room, which was this small cubicle with a window, but the window was covered with dust, which I thought was dust. 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. I explained my intentions. Thomas Keller: In the beginning, when Don and Sally Schmitt had the restaurant, there was one menu. 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. Visitors to Napa brought word back to San Francisco, where favorable mention in the press drew interest from even farther away. I was questioning my ability as a chef. What do you say to any chef? 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. So the lobster Bohemian came out the way you interpreted it at that time. He knew San Francisco in and out. I think its discipline. So, we have a sous-chef thats responsible for the meats and the garde manger. But at the time, I wanted to get out into the world. He is also featured in "My Last Supper" by Melanie Dunea. So we have to our expectations in our kitchen, in our restaurant, in our service. 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. Very few people in our country even knew that there was an American culinary team representing our country in Lyon every two years at this competition of 23 other nations. Every day after school hed come home and watch Graham Kerr or Julia Child. 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 we called the restaurant. I could go anywhere in the world and be a cook. Thomas Keller: It was my second failure in a restaurant. 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. So thats what we do. Why Thomas Keller's Michelin Stars Make Him Unique - TastingTable.com It changes your life of course. Per Se, which was designed from scratch and custom-built as part of the overall construction process, was an immediate hit on the New York restaurant scene, with reservations booked months in advance and publications including The New Yorker and The New York Times giving rave reviews. You know, learn how to cut brunoise, learn how to peel an onion, learn how to slice. All of them loved the idea but turned me down. We have to give them training. [24], Keller currently has three online cooking classes at Masterclass.com, pursuing his belief in teaching. It was a normal thing and it still is today. And I shouldnt say my first job, my first job in a formal kitchen was as a commis. He was a man who would travel ten miles to save ten cents on a bar of margarine. 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. Everybody read Herb Caen whether you liked food or not. Keller has joked in the past that the motivation for Bouchon's opening was to give him somewhere to eat after work at The French Laundry. Yountville, CA: ad hoc, addendum, Bouchon, Bouchon Bakery, New York: Bouchon Bakery, Per Se, TAK Room (closed), Outstanding Chef: America, James Beard Foundation, 1997. And Raphael was run just like the restaurants ran in France. We had Johnson and Wales. Of course there were the schools, some schools in France, but they were mostly focused on consumers, mostly housewives on vacation who wanted to learn how to cook, as Julia Child certainly did when she went to Le Cordon Bleu. 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. Its not just about going out to dinner. In 1994, he set his heart on a converted laundry building in Yountville, in the heart of Californias Napa Valley wine country. 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. I was a year-and-a-half younger, therefore I had to be set in front of the dishwasher. How do we respond to that? Starting at $15/month (billed annually) for all classes and sessions. Thomas Keller: Probably 17. 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. He was tall, masculine, broad, a good-looking Frenchman who was the executive chef of this private club. 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. I became a consultant, which paid me more money than I ever made before, but which was so unrewarding to do that that I was just miserable. Not everything changed every day, but the menu changed every day. 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. And I thought that was just brilliant in the way he wrote that book. 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. The ignorance allowed me to do it. He wanted to have chicken, barbeque chicken. Each time you made it it was yours, it was not necessarily his. 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. To cook something and overcook it, and then just throw it away would be just a waste of life. 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. You were actually born on the West Coast. Theyll pick up Bon Appetit magazine or Gourmet or Saveur or any of the magazines. 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 one thing they said, Its not open enough. They were only open four days. Its been a great pleasure. Whats so great about that? Right? Our job is to mentor and train the next generation of superstars, of franchise players, if you will. My first job in the kitchen was as a commis. Again, we dont know what to expect. Just go. In the years that followed, Keller and Cunningham expanded their operations in a number of directions simultaneously with new restaurants and manufacturing ventures. 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. 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. Theyll pick up the food guides. It was something that made him really comfortable. And he was always the one who was out there getting reservations for the restaurant. Michelin was coming to America and we didnt know what was going to happen. On January 26, 2004, Keller opened his restaurant Bouchon in Las Vegas. If I wasnt, I learned it from her. Talk about Rakel. And what do you say to Paul Bocuse? I took a shower like I normally did and I came back to the restaurant. 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 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. People walking around town, he would just chat people up and, Oh, you know, my son owns The French Laundry. And they would say, Oh, can you get me a reservation? Oh yeah. So I gave them some and I took some. I wanted to see new things. 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. A chef in France is the head of a specific area. All the men went to the war and the women went to work. But of course there was no recipe for the spinach pasta. And I went to his restaurant, had lunch on my way to Arbois and I left thinking, Wow. Was it a restaurant that was progressive and contemporary? Chef Keller led a team from the U.S. to its first-ever gold medal in theBocuse dOr, a prestigious biannual competition that is regarded as the Olympics of the culinary world. 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. So yes, I primarily lived with my mother, and my grandmother for a little while as well, and my great aunts. Soon, he started taking up chef positions at various restaurants in Rhode Island, where he met his mentor and French Master Chef Roland Henin. Where else would you aspire to go if it wasnt the best? Out of those 400, 52 agreed to write a check, for a lot of different reasons, for any amount of money. We had never when I say we, Im talking about the community of chefs who have always aspired to be of that quality, not necessarily ever achieving those stars, but to be of that quality. I said, Im never going to do that again. But nonetheless I built my own little smoker out of an old refrigerator and cured and smoked my own salmon. And if we do those three things right, what happens? The Schmitts wanted $1.2 million for their business, and Keller had nothing resembling that kind of money, but they agreed to take $5,000 from Keller to hold in escrow while he returned to Los Angeles to raise the money he needed. And so you have a pastry chef who is responsible for the entire pastry station, right? Now Fernand Point was at his time in his era, which was the 30s and 40s he was the greatest chef in France, and therefore of course, the greatest chef in the world. Its really, thats where I learned about the idea of being a team as it relates to a sports franchise. 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. My ignorance, as I said earlier, just continued to motivate me, to propel me forward. And it was really about Marines and their ability to stalk, their ability to be calm, their ability to pounce quickly and seize their prey. 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. It took me quite a while to get there. Cooking wasnt the question, but could I lead a team better? But there is a lot of work being done certainly in the past 20, 25 years that has helped us as a profession to really have an impact. 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. Interview with Chef Thomas Keller - Institute of Culinary Education So of course, it wasnt going to come until 4:00 in the afternoon, so we had all day to walk around and just kind of try to patiently wait. In our kitchen, for example, we have a sous-chef that would be what we call the A.M. And I came back a bit arrogant, a bit uppity, a bit disrespectful of not my kitchen, but the owner, and so we didnt see eye to eye. At this time newspapers still had a social columnist. So the schools that we did have were relatively new. But it was such a wonderful moment that lasted for days afterwards, because you had all the leftovers. Paul tells a lovely story about when he was a young man in The French Resistance being wounded and being taken to an American military hospital, American field military hospital and being given a blood transfusion. The Pastry Prodigy: Chef Richard Capizzi | Institute of Culinary Education You want to go there and you want to have an experience. You have truly defined haute cuisine in this country. Well, I could choose, you know, you go to a hotel and you had six pillows to choose from. Before we get there, Ruth Reichls article, as important as that was, there was an article prior to that which very few people realize. You set up for dinner, then you have dinner. I was a semi-well-known chef with, I guess, a checkered reputation, and now I needed to go out and raise the money to buy this restaurant. And I thought, Wow, this may be a great opportunity for me. How did you get started in the restaurant business? Thomas Keller: Mentor is its interesting because, again, these things have happened in my life kind of by coincidence or by some divine plan. I didnt have a job. Chef and restaurateur Thomas Keller says his mother was his first mentor. We would have been on a flight so we would have missed the phone call. Tell us about the Thanksgiving dinner you do at Bouchon. 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. Its not just about getting something to eat. In 2013 we raised to ninth. 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.. 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. 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. In 1999, Thomas Keller published The French Laundry Cookbook, which he considers his definitive book on cuisine. After two years in Paris, Keller returned to New York, confident of his abilities in the kitchen and eager to prove he could run a kitchen in a first-rate establishment. We made an instant connection, and we agreed on a price, and I was going to buy The French Laundry. Ill dye it green. So, food color came out, we dyed the pasta green. After World War II the men came back and the women stayed at work and that spawned the convenience food generation, which was us. I was very impatient, and I wanted to go out and explore. 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. The other one was off on his career. The morel mushrooms, everything was just right, and I didnt appreciate it. On your website theres actually a wonderfully rich list of philosophy and core values. Youre only doing it because you love the person and because youre responsible for the person and because thats what you do. We can all cook. We live by them day to day, not necessarily having written them down. I said, Jonathan, youre the first chef de cuisine. Youve mentioned the value of consistency, but nothing says it like that. 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. I mean if youre going to go to France which was arguably the best country, had the best food, the best products, the best chefs, the best restaurants thats what you wanted to do. Once again, things got off to a good start, and Keller enjoyed making friends with colleagues in the West Coast restaurant scene. So when they were divorced, that was her path. It was about the engagement with others. We went to the local markets all the time. Thomas Keller: This was a time in my life when I started to embrace the idea of doing things myself outside of the kitchen, having a garden. How Thomas Keller's Impact is Changing the Restaurant Industry Its reaction is to jump. Thomas Keller: We became friends. We all learned a great deal from it. You have received the highest rating in Michelin, three stars. And I was just It was emotional. Thomas Keller: Rakel. Of course you never know those things when youre doing it. He told me. His father, a United States Marine, was stationed nearby at Camp Pendleton. Thomas Keller | Thomas Keller Restaurant Group Thomas Keller: We began of course with caviar. So he worked with a couple chefs in helping them raise money, organize their businesses. Were committed to one another. So of course the next week he showed up. Our first year was 2009. One of the things that I dont believe we do enough of is to help our veterans, our servicemen and women. 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. This was kind of at the end of the era of the La Le restaurants. After three years at La Rive, unable to buy it from the owners, he left and moved to New York and then Paris, apprenticing at various Michelin-starred restaurants. It was a wonderful restaurant. He's the role model, the icon". 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. Somebody will hire you. I wanted to make sure that I had somewhere to go to. It was a Frenchman, and he would bring me 12 rabbits beautifully dressed every week. Of course I didnt have any resources whatsoever. I understood that there was a lot of competition, because not only did I want the vegetables, so did the deer and the beavers and any other wildlife that would come into the fray. Of course, when you butt heads with the owner, ultimately the owners going to throw you out and thats what he did. And you know, it really goes back to when I was a young child and that was one of the meals my mother would cook would be Thanksgiving. 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. But you know, just standing there watching this beautiful, elegant, ferocious animal was something that was very captivating. I mean an extraordinary chef. And to keep herself busy, and of course to supply some income for the family, she worked in restaurants.