[8], After the success of The French Laundry, Thomas and his brother, Joseph Keller (currently owner/chef of Josef's in Las Vegas), opened Bouchon in 1998. 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. We live by them day to day, not necessarily having written them down. Now I think it would be casual fine dining. If you dont, then weve only failed you, we havent failed ourselves, and thats an important thing for us to remember. He loved wine. We fell to tenth. World War II kind of shook that all up. And you know what, it was okay, either one. [25][26][27], This article is about the chef. It all goes back to the rabbit. On January 26, 2004, Keller opened his restaurant Bouchon in Las Vegas. She served me one of the best sandwiches I ever had, which was beef tongue. So yes, I primarily lived with my mother, and my grandmother for a little while as well, and my great aunts. And I realized that my window wasnt covered with dust. 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. Thomas Keller: Yeah. Success is about giving to our team, our guests, our friends and family and community through time and commitment, advice and mentoring. Youve mentioned the value of consistency, but nothing says it like that. 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. Thomas was considered too young to work as a cook so he started as a dishwasher. So I didnt have rent to pay. So we had to have a commercial bank loan. I dont know why, I guess because of the age difference, my brother Joseph was allowed to handle a knife, therefore he was allowed to work with the cooks. Now Ive got this rabbit thats got a broken leg, and Ive got to kill it and dress it. It changed, whatever the seasons brought, whatever the vegetables were. 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. We had The Greenbrier, which had a qualified externship program. 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. Theres bronze, silver and gold. They agreed to take $5,000 in escrow. Thats just what you do. Talk about Rakel. What does the American Dream mean to you? And to keep herself busy, and of course to supply some income for the family, she worked in restaurants. Theyll pick up the food guides. So we were one of the first restaurants to kind of fail. And so as a young person, my brother and I my brother Joseph, who is 18 months older than I would spend a lot of time in the restaurant and in the kitchen. In the next few years, Keller would pursue his interest in French cooking, developing close relationships with the cooks and proprietors of French restaurants in his own country while applying for jobs in France. Forget about three. I said, Im never going to do that again. Every day after school hed come home and watch Graham Kerr or Julia Child. The demographics were very important in that process, which we just totally threw out the window, or we just miscalculated. 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. So there was just the three of us and then along came my younger sister when she remarried. 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. Thomas Keller: Per Se opened in 2004. We had a beautiful time on the back porch of our house, and that Monday night, the next night, he passed away. And that was a wonderful environment, very familiar, very small. And his house was right next door to The French Laundry, where he lived and it was a common thing to go over there after work in the afternoon, at four or five oclock when the morning team would be finishing up, and theyd be over there on his front porch drinking beer out of cans, because he really liked canned beer as opposed to bottled beer. Thomas Keller: It was my second failure in a restaurant. You, as a dishwasher, even though you may have been perceived as the lowliest position in a kitchen, you touched everybody, and your job was critical in their ability to be successful. Thomas Keller: In the beginning, when Don and Sally Schmitt had the restaurant, there was one menu. They believed in me. You had to sweep the floor at these specific times. It was about that physical activity that was so compelling for me. I had committed myself since 1977 to make this my career. Then of course, I think it was 1988, when we had Black Monday and that was kind of the demise of that era of spending. You had your different areas for your knives, your forks, your spoons, things like that. I mean if youre having dinner you should be thinking about what youre eating. Thomas Keller: It was a very difficult time in New York City. I think the single most important thing you can do the single most important decision you make when youre making a reservation to a restaurant is not what restaurant youre going to, but who youre going with. And one thing they said, Its not open enough. They were only open four days. It was part of our culture, part of our philosophy, part of the philosophy that we had embraced from Don and Sally Schmitt. The following year he added two additional locations of Bouchon Bakery at The Venetian in Las Vegas while continuing to vary his commercial ventures. And we thought, Wow, theres 2,000 people there every night. So that they could plate the food. Yeah. When he was seven his parents separated, and Thomas moved with his mother and two older brothers to Palm Beach, Florida, where his grandmother and great aunts helped raise him and his brothers. Not just in the kitchen but in the management positions, in the ownership positions, everywhere that I kind of struggled in the past. You dont know. One thing that is so fascinating about your biography is your lack of formal culinary education, the lack of a Cordon Bleu certificate. It was a young chef from The French Laundry, Timothy Hollingsworth. And hell tell the story that he is part American because he has American blood running through his veins. But in retrospect it was beautiful. My saving grace when I moved to Paris was my friend Serge Raoul, who allowed me to stay at his apartment. We had a beautiful foie gras to start, and we had I forget the dessert. By 1986, he felt ready to try his hand again at opening a restaurant of his own. Im looking at this rabbit hanging on the side of the barn, and 11 rabbits in the cage. Its this whole process, which has really kind of made it really difficult for us to have a proper stage in the kitchen. Thomas Keller: Herb Caen was a great writer. You opened your own restaurant in New York in 1986. Thats what he wanted. I learned six disciplines at the dishwasher which have, I think, become a foundation for my career, and I think for many people who aspire to have success in their careers. 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. Did your mother or father support your culinary ambitions? So living that dream became one of the hardest things Ive ever done, but also one of the most gratifying things Ive ever done in my life. No more than three days later (so you don't forget too much), take . So you have chef electricians. You know, this is truly an extraordinary moment in American culinary history. [5], After returning to America in 1984, he was hired as chef de cuisine at La Reserve in New York, before leaving to open Rakel in early 1987. 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. So for me, there wasnt really a lot of awareness about opportunities outside of learning the trade in a kitchen. Another great milestone for you was the Legion dHonneur. So when you go into a restaurant like The French Laundry and you have to make a choice, its like, What do I choose? Right? Oh, what difference does it make? With just a small four-burner stove with one oven it takes you a long time to prepare dinner. Were putting our were composing our dishes in a way theyre going to be compelling for people, but we also have the ability to modify anything we do for somebody who has a dietary restriction or who just doesnt like something. 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. The second summer I decided to go to New York City to try my hand in Manhattan, and that was when I met Serge Raoul. It was a very small kitchen, and it was a beautiful experience because it was what I related to from just returning from France. 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. We sat in their kitchen in their house next door. He actually sat with us, and his wife Sabine told me as we were leaving, she said, You know, Ive never seen my husband ever, ever sit down with anybody in this restaurant. He sat with us for about five minutes and chatted. And he said, Oh, and by the way, Bouchon got one.. Ill dye it green. So, food color came out, we dyed the pasta green. America had competed since the beginning but never even came close to the podium. 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. Our second challenge was in 2011. I had been reading about this restaurant for years. He was a great storyteller. 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. [12], Keller is the president of the Bocuse d'Or U.S. team and was responsible for recruiting and training the 2009 candidates. I think its discipline. Thomas Keller: The first had an odd name, so dont laugh. The restaurant was Per Se, in New York. When I was in South Florida, I was working in a restaurant called the Caf du Parc. Today we have executive chefs as well. And you never know. So I became the chef, the second chef there. It was a restaurant in West Palm Beach, Florida. Thomas Keller: Probably 17. 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. French kitchens are very delineated, arent they? Come over. And we went and it was an amazing moment to be able to walk into Taillevent, which had such a profound impact on my career, on my philosophy, on the culture that we have, on my skills, on everything in my life. As time went on and we became more and more popular, we realized that we wanted to add a tasting menu. He thought that would be the perfect kind of place for me, small, manageable, in a beautiful community here in Napa Valley. Were going to have this instant business. But we were doing, at the time, fine dining. 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.