Thomas Keller
Thomas Keller
Thomas Kelleris an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook writer. He and his landmark Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry in Yountville, California, have won multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation, notably the Best California Chef in 1996, and the Best Chef in America in 1997. The restaurant is a perennial winner in the annual Restaurant Magazine list of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChef
Date of Birth14 October 1955
CityPendleton, CA
CountryUnited States of America
Historically in restaurants, the service staff is awarded significantly higher wages than cooks and other staff who prepare the food on which a restaurant's reputation is based. The gap in pay is so great that it is becoming increasingly difficult for young cooks to pursue their passion at the rate of pay restaurants are able to afford.
With passion, if you see the first asparagus of the springtime and you become passionate about it, so much the better, but three weeks later, when you’ve seen that asparagus every day now, passions have subsided. What’s going to make you treat the asparagus the same? It’s the desire.
This is the great challenge: to maintain passion for the everyday routine and the endlessly repeated act, to derive deep gratification from the mundane.
Its not about passion. Passion is something that we tend to overemphasize, that we certainly place too much importance on. Passion ebbs and flows. To me, it's about desire. If you have constant, unwavering desire to be a cook, then u'll be a great cook.
Well, it took me twenty-seven years, as long as I've been cooking.
We realized the imbalance of earnings and that a change needed to occur in order to provide everyone in the restaurant an opportunity to pursue their dreams,
For me, that's one of the important things about cooking. What was good enough yesterday may not be good enough today.
I am a perfect example of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps: My mom raised six kids by herself.
But the project, from beginning to end, was a little over two years, from the time we wrote the proposal to its publication.
It's nice to have the restaurants close by. It makes them easier to control and keep an eye on.
ultimately, the system proved instrumental in fostering an undeniably unified restaurant staff.
Now the restaurants have begun to catch up with the wine-making; there are numerous great restaurants in Napa Valley, and it's wonderful because the people are there for just that: great food and great wine.
Then, as the day progresses, depending on how the product is coming in - for instance, the fish man will fax us and say black bass is great - throughout the day, we'll also make judgment calls and adapt to what's available.
It's one thing you aspire to: someday, you'll be able to write a book.