When I was a young cook,
the best restaurants in the world were French restaurants.
There were generations of great chefs in France.
In America, we didn't have that.
I didn't sit at my mother's knee
stirring pots of ragù or making braised beef.
We fed ourselves with whatever was available.
Swanson's TV dinners.
Chef Boyardee SpaghettiOs.
Kraft macaroni and cheese.
So how does a young man born in mid 20th-century America,
without any culinary education…
how does he become one of the most recognized chefs in America?
It's a question that I asked myself many times.
The best way of introducing Chef Keller?
He is… the president.
He is… a statesman.
He is the single person that everybody looks to as the best.
Watching him in the kitchen,
there is never a moment where he is not completely focused.
Every turn,
every reach for a pan,
is so slow motion,
so deliberate.
It is a fluid dance of perfection.
Thomas is intense.
He's never 100% satisfied.
There's always been a drive in him to get things to a better place.
That's his approach with everything.
Thomas Keller has led the way for American fine dining
for several decades now.
He's the only American chef to have two Michelin three-star restaurants.
Per Se and, of course, The French Laundry.
Sustaining that for decades,
nobody has come close to that.
Thomas was one of the first American chefs
to redefine what the entire dining experience could be.
We have a jambonnade with quail on the side,
with some sultana raisin purée.
A little frisée from our garden.
You were going out to really think about the food,
to be seduced by the food,
to be entertained by the food.
He made food the performance.
In his mind,
The French Laundry is gonna be a permanent force in gastronomy.
Not for 10, 20, 30 years.
Forever.
That commitment,
that legacy,
it becomes who you are.
There's hundreds, if not thousands,
who have looked to Thomas as the North Star.
He is the most important American chef in history.
Throughout my early career,
you went to a fine dining restaurant,
it was a bit intimidating.
If you didn't know what to do in a French restaurant, or how to behave…
you were looked down upon.
As a young American, I was always very uncomfortable.
I didn't understand why.
Why does it have to be like that?
So when we opened The French Laundry,
we made a conscious effort to eliminate the intimidation,
to make it fun.
You look at the cornet, which looks like a little ice-cream cone.
That immediately eliminates the sense of intimidation.
And then there are all these different plays on words.
Dishes like "Tongue in Cheek,"
"Macaroni and Cheese,"
the "Yabba Dabba Do,"
"Coffee and Doughnuts."
Yes, it's beautiful, it tastes really good,
it's the best ingredients available,
but it makes me smile.
Because if we're not having fun, then what's the point?
I was born the youngest of five boys.
My parents divorced when I was quite young.
So I grew up with my mother.
When I got to be a young teenager,
we would go to the restaurant that she worked at after school,
and then she would give us chores.
Dishwashing was my post.
At that time, my mother was raising six children,
so the last thing I wanted to do was make her life more difficult.
So I became really, really quick and efficient
at cleaning to the standard that my mother expected.
After high school, my mother came to me and said,
"The chef is gonna leave, and I'm gonna put you in that position."
Initially, I was apprehensive.
I wasn't really interested in cooking,
but, at that time, my brother Joseph was the cook.
My brother taught me basic elements of cooking.
How to poach an egg,
how to roast a prime rib,
how to boil a lobster tail,
and, most importantly, hollandaise sauce.
Initially, I was not sure
if I was actually making the emulsification correctly.
Did I cook the egg yolks enough?
Was the clarified butter too hot?
If I added too much, it would separate.
It was day after day, being challenged with making the hollandaise sauce.
And then one day, the light switch goes on.
I took my egg yolks,
I put it over a bain-marie,
whisking it to the proper temperature,
and then starting to drizzle in the clarified butter,
lemon juice, and salt.
That was it.
The ritual of doing the same thing over and over and over and over again
and getting really good at it.
That was magical for me.
I really enjoyed doing it.
And I became a chef at this small restaurant.
-Four by four? -Four by four!
-Four two?
-Four two! -Two!
In 1977,
I found work as a staff cook
in a small beach club called the Dunes Club.
Roland Henin, who was the executive chef,
he was larger than life.
He was accomplished.
He was knowledgeable. He was handsome.
He had a Jeep that he drove. He had a beautiful German girlfriend.
I said, "This guy is just badass."
One day, he asked me a very simple question. "Why do cooks cook?"
At that moment in time, I wasn't thinking about why cooks cook.
I wasn't really interested in why cooks cook.
And so he answered the question for me.
He said, "We cook to nurture people."
Nurturing wasn't something that I thought about.
It wasn't a word that I used.
But that really resonated with me.
So I decided that this was gonna become my life.
Roland was a French chef, so I wanted to be like him.
From that moment on, it was all-out, pure effort
to become the best French cook that I could.
-Thanks. -Thank you.
Here?
There you go.
When I was learning how to become a chef,
my mother was very proud of what I was doing.
Here's your lettuce, sir.
Look at that.
She was always there supporting me
in terms of direction or mentorship.
-Good job, huh? -Yeah.
-Mmm. -They're beautiful. Nice.
And then, one day, I was at work and got a phone call.
My mother passed.
It was quite sudden.
At that time, there was a lot of uncertainty for me.
Like, what… what was I gonna do?
I became ultra-critical
of what I was doing.
I'm second-guessing my decisions,
rethinking my purpose.
And so the only thing I thought about was how to become a better chef.
I wanted to make sure that I was representing the standard
that she would embrace from her son.
In 1983,
I wanted to immerse myself in the French culture,
as much knowledge as I could,
embracing my purpose.
I decided to move to France.
French cuisine was considered
the most superior cuisine in the world
for several centuries.
When Thomas went to France,
Paul Bocuse starts to challenge the way things are done.
Bocuse said, "We're gonna lighten the sauces."
"We're gonna take flour out of them. We're gonna use reductions."
"We're gonna reduce the portion size."
"We're gonna have modern presentation."
This was a revolution,
and it became known as la nouvelle cuisine,
"the new cooking."
For Thomas, these were very inspiring ideas.
I was absorbing so much information,
so much technique, so much knowledge.
I started writing in my journals,
doing diagrams, drawing compositions,
copying the recipes that I had learned that week,
and then practicing on my own.
The style of the kitchen,
the philosophy, the culture,
was something that I yearned for,
and I wanted to replicate that
when I finally came home to America.
After this wonderful time in Paris,
I became the first American chef at La Reserve,
one of the great French restaurants in New York City.
And that was a huge accomplishment.
Couple of plates…
La Reserve was a conservative restaurant.
They were very specific on what was approachable for them in cuisine.
Many things were still served in the previous generation's format…
which means that you would roast a rack of lamb,
there'd be a little pot of sauce.
The dining room would actually plate your food.
At that time, I had a lot of new techniques,
I had a lot of new ideas.
It wasn't something I wanted to do.
I was arrogant.
I thought I knew more than anybody else.
That was a conflict between me and the owners.
Within a year, I was gone.
I was fired from my job.
-Good evening. -Michel!
-Nice to be back. -Yes.
Well, just came back from, uh, from France.
We had some wonderful tasting, and then we spent two days in Champagne,
uh, where we had the pleasure to taste with Agrapart, Egly-Ouriet,
and then we had an amazing, amazing tasting at Salon,
where they opened some very old bottles of champagne for us.
What was the oldest Salon that you tasted?
2002, and then after that, we had the Delamotte 1993.
You bring any home?
No, Chef.
No. Unfortunately, no.
When I left La Reserve,
I called my friend Serge Raoul.
All right, so tonight, with the menu…
He operated a very successful restaurant on Prince Street.
We started talking about opening our own restaurant together.
That was destined to be Rakel.
The cuisine was classic French cuisine,
but modernizing it.
We were doing things that were avant-garde.
I thought, "Now I have this beautiful stage for me to execute."
Rakel received wonderful reviews from both The New York Times and New York magazine,
which were the two most important publications in New York at the time.
Everything was on track.
Everything felt like we would be there for 20 years.
We were gonna be one of the great institutions of New York City.
And then the market crashed.
The next day, fine dining wasn't acceptable anymore.
People get kind of nervous.
My partner wanted to reformat Rakel
to be more casual, less expensive.
-And the wine… -We could have probably three…
From the moment I decided to become a chef,
it was always about fine dining.
It's gonna increase by 25,000 a barrel.
-I had to make a choice. -1,200 cases next year…
Did I want to continue on my career path of doing fine dining?
Like, "Oh, hey, we're changing…"
Or did I want to embrace this idea of casualness?
No, we just don't care, we don't want…
And ultimately, I left Rakel.
Continue to increase production, and then sell it.
-That's what I understand, yes. -That's what you…
That's what I understand. To increase production…
We did it.
After my failure at Rakel,
I got a job as the executive chef at Checkers in downtown Los Angeles.
-Hey, guys. How you doing? -Hi, Chef.
At that time, there was a food and wine event,
and I was tasked to come up with a dish
that was gonna wow the Angelenos.
What am I gonna do?
One day, a group of my friends decided to take me for ice cream.
That moment that the young lady had put the ice-cream cone
in the little holder on top of the counter,
I saw exactly what I was gonna do.
There was a recipe that I had developed,
which was like a cracker, very thin,
that you could mold.
I thought about the ability to turn this tuile
into a cone shape.
It is simply a cracker
with tuna tartare
and wasabi in the bottom of the cone.
Guests were amused.
It was a success. No one had ever experienced that before.
The cornet, for me, was a huge relief.
It represented this new beginning, this new opportunity
to express something differently than I've ever done before.
I was liberated from any chains that I had previously about fine dining.
The real purpose of cooking became evident.
It's to make people happy.
-You got a saucière for that? -Yes, Chef.
-Where's the saucière? -I have it, Chef.
Where is it?
-It isn't… Where… -To the bottom, Chef.
-There. -Okay, go get them, thank you, Chef.
Let's put the béarnaise sauce in the saucière.
-Oui. -Thank you, Chef.
Just go ahead.
Thank you.
Introducing the cornet for the first time…
it was a huge success.
Thank you, Chef.
That said, Checkers wasn't a good experience for me.
The general manager, we didn't get along at all.
And I was terminated from my job.
That period of time was difficult.
Uncertain.
What was I gonna do with my career?
I was mid-thirties.
No job.
No source of income.
When you think about it, I come back from France,
one of the great French restaurants in New York City,
I get thrown out of that.
And then I open Rakel,
and I fail there.
Moved to Los Angeles, got some great recognition.
Yet my attitude wasn't acceptable.
I needed to modify my behavior.
Can I be a leader?
That's the question.
After I left Checkers, I had a small apartment in Los Angeles.
I'm doing private dining events around the city.
And I'm trying to find my next opportunity.
On a trip to Napa, I stopped to see Jonathan Waxman,
a friend of mine from New York.
He said, "There's this restaurant in Yountville,
The French Laundry, that's for sale."
"It may be perfect for you."
I had heard about The French Laundry,
because any time you read about Napa Valley,
The French Laundry was always on that list of where to eat.
It sparked my interest.
I remember that moment when I walked on the property
and walked up through the arbor with the antique rosebush
into the courtyard.
The feeling of the garden right in front of the kitchen door.
And then looking through the kitchen door
and seeing this small country-style kitchen.
The restaurant was very simple, but felt authentic.
The owners, Sally and Don, invited me in, and we immediately bonded.
I knew right away that this is the place that I should be.
That emotion overcame me.
It was like destiny.
These trees, of course.
-All the pink flowers are peaches. -Mm-hmm.
But this is a leaf.
Uh, and a long time ago…
Well, probably 20 years ago…
-No, maybe more. -Yeah, close to 30 now.
-Really? Yes. -Yeah, I know. It's crazy.
Yeah, there are…
When you came over to the farm that first time,
uh, you picked a leaf, and you crunched it up in your fingers,
and, uh… then I smelled it, and…
I was… it was transformative,
because, well, as you knew, but I didn't know at all,
uh, it's got that almond smell to it.
-Exactly. Right, yeah. -Culinary dimensions, all kinds of things.
Uh, and it was a transitional experience,
realizing what chefs were about, actually.
I'm growing food, but you're actually growing farmers.
-You're growing other artisans as well. -Yeah.
Opening The French Laundry meant so many different things.
Most importantly, I had another chance, right? Another opportunity.
So what am I gonna do?
I have to be courageous.
I had this sense of urgency.
From a culinary point of view, I saw a clear path.
It wasn't gonna be that French fine dining environment.
The menu was gonna be playful.
I would serve the cornet.
I wanted to make sure that our guests immediately felt comfortable.
We had a small kitchen. We didn't have any equipment.
I didn't even own a sauté pan.
We were pinching pennies,
trying to lay a foundation for this restaurant.
When I started out, The French Laundry was in its infancy.
Chef Keller had something to prove to everyone.
He knew that every little minutia had to be looked after
in order for him to create the ethos that he wanted.
There was never a moment where he wasn't completely focused.
Every thought was about propelling that restaurant forward.
It just fueled us even more.
Every single day,
the little successes drove me to the next day,
to the next day, to the next day.
It became a quest for perfection.
There was probably only
two or three times that I saw Chef nervous.
And one of those was certainly when Ruth Reichl came in.
At the time, she was a food critic for The New York Times.
And so the whole kitchen was buzzing about this person.
It was a big deal.
After they were finished,
he went out and talked to them.
He was out there for an hour.
Three of us sat there, just waiting.
He came back in,
and he just sort of
gave us a little head nod and said,
"She really liked it."
And then, a week later,
the review came out in The Times,
and I remember just elation.
We did it.
After that written review,
everything just exploded.
There was a line out the door every morning.
We were on a roll in so many different ways.
After Ruth's article, there was an amazing amount of growth.
We realized we're not opening the blue door
every night to this small group of people.
We had a much bigger audience.
From the Beard Foundation
to number one on World's 50 Best,
the trajectory was straight up.
It became the mecca of culinary.
The French chefs that he looked up to,
they were coming to him now.
And they weren't there because it was convenient.
They were there because they knew
he had surpassed them.
Hey, Chef.
How you doing? Good to see you.
-Hey, Alex. How you doin'? -Chef, great to see you.
Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.
One day, a friend of mine asked me
if I wanted to become involved in opening a restaurant
like The French Laundry in New York City.
New York was a city that I thought I would live in for most of my career.
And so the opportunity was just too great to pass up.
But one of my main problems was, how was I going to run The French Laundry
and open a fine dining restaurant in New York City?
I was struggling with that for quite some time.
And then, one day, it's like the light switch goes on.
Uh… just close The French Laundry.
The idea was to bring the staff members from The French Laundry to New York
to train a new team.
And then, after Per Se opens, we would go back to The French Laundry.
It was kind of like Noah's Ark.
My partner says, "You're crazy. Why are you doing this?"
I wanted to accept the challenge
and reenter New York City with The French Laundry on my shoulders,
and saying, "This is what we can do."
I was worried.
He was coming back to the city that booted him out.
I thought to myself, "What a massive risk."
"At this point in your career, you can't come any higher."
"There seemingly is only one way,
and that's down."
I cannot imagine the amount of pressure he must have been feeling.
…up a little bit, then there's fresh in stock back there.
-Okay. -All right. So when they're done…
When Per Se opened,
there were hundreds of people here.
All my friends,
family members, press.
Just an extraordinary moment in time.
It was a great opening.
We're in for two, two five-course.
-Two five. -Two!
Five days later,
we were getting ready for service as normal,
with two of my sous-chefs in the kitchen.
Uh, and we started to smell smoke.
So we mustered up, got everybody out of the restaurant.
So there's cookware, there's sauces on the stove.
Everybody left really quick.
The fire department came.
They finally found the location of the fire, which was inside of a wall.
A fireman got up on the fish station.
He had this huge axe in his hand.
And he took this axe and just crushed the wall.
As soon as that happened, the flames shot out.
And then there was just gushing waters everywhere.
I was standing in a river.
Everything that was on the workstations, everything that was on the stove,
just disappeared.
I was so distraught, so upset,
and terrified.
At that time, The French Laundry was gonna reopen.
I was due back to take my position again.
But I had to stay in New York to reopen Per Se.
I called my attorney and said,
"I need to get out of here."
"What can we do?"
I was so disappointed.
But then I started to think about the last generation of great chefs,
their restaurants died around them
because they could no longer do the work that they did 20 years before.
They didn't have that moment in time
where they realized that they could no longer be the chef of their restaurant.
Working in The French Laundry at the pass, every single day,
was my purpose.
Now I have two restaurants.
And it made me realize that I needed to become a different type of leader.
And so I elevated the chef at The French Laundry.
So my position, I basically eliminated.
-Good afternoon. -Chef!
Tasting menu, pretty straightforward tonight.
"Oysters & Pearls" as a check.
Cover crop salad.
That's the beautiful selection
of all the tiny shoots and greens from the garden.
Sweet butter poached lobster. That's with the garlic hollandaise.
Pickled onions and wilted spinach. Bread and butter as a check.
The next year, we were more confident.
We had more resources.
We had 100 people working at The French Laundry.
Really great job last night.
And 100 more working at Per Se.
Good evening, team.
Sandra!
So, from my point of view, we became twice as strong.
115 turns.
Then we heard Michelin was gonna come.
The Michelin Guide was the benchmark of quality restaurants.
The great chefs of France were all Michelin three-star restaurants.
At the time, Michelin Guide didn't exist in America.
New York City was going to be
the first city that Michelin was gonna cover.
And that was very exciting.
On the day that it was to be announced,
we were on pins and needles all day long.
And then I got a call.
I saw "unknown caller."
And I answered the phone.
Time just stood still.
She said, "I'm calling from Michelin, and I just wanted to let you know
that Michelin has awarded you the highest accolade."
"We give three stars for Per Se."
I was stunned.
We were the first American restaurant to receive three Michelin stars.
The next year, The French Laundry also received three Michelin stars.
Within a two-year period of time, I had gone from zero stars,
to three stars, to six stars.
I mean, this young, you know, American kid,
who would have thought?
It's one thing
to have a restaurant for five years that's awesome.
It's an entirely other thing to have it for 30 or more years
and have that still remain relevant,
exceptional,
the best.
That's an extraordinary feat.
How many people get the opportunity
to not only change people's lives for the better,
but leave a mark on this world?
Restaurants matter that much,
especially that restaurant.
Thomas has taught the next generation of real innovators.
The Corey Lees of the world,
the Grant Achatzs of the world,
both of whom have Michelin three-star restaurants.
And then the followers he has.
There's hundreds, if not thousands of them.
He is in that lineage of greatness.
It used to be we looked to all these French chefs
as our heroes and role models.
Now there's Carême, there's Escoffier, Point, Bocuse,
and here in America,
it's Thomas Keller.
It's been such a dynamic and unpredictable career.
Initially, you're just working in your career path to learn.
Then you're working in your career path to make yourself successful.
Then you reach a point where you find that success,
and then you start to give back.
And that's the phase that I'm in now, is giving back.
I've always said we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.
Like the chefs before me,
I have this responsibility
to continue to influence and impact the future generations.
When somebody tells you you have influenced them,
that's why I do what I do.