Thomas Keller

Infobox Chef
name = Thomas Keller


caption =
birthdate = birth date and age|1955|10|14
birthplace = Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California
deathdate =
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style = French
education = Apprenticeship
ratings =
restaurants = The French Laundry (Yountville, CA); Bouchon (Yountville, CA); Bouchon Bakery (Yountville, CA); ad hoc (Yountville, CA); Bouchon (Las Vegas); Per Se (New York City)
prevrests =
television =
awards =
website =

Thomas Keller (born October 14, 1955) is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook writer. He and his landmark restaurant, The French Laundry in Yountville, California, in the Napa Valley, have won multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation, notably the Best California Chef in 1996 and the Best Chef in America in 1997, and the restaurant is a perennial winner or top 4 finisher in the annual Restaurant Magazine list of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World. In 2005, he was awarded the highest, three star rating in the inaugural Michelin Guide for New York for his restaurant per se, and in 2006, he was awarded three stars in the inaugural Michelin Guide to the Bay Area for his restaurant The French Laundry, making him one of only two chefs in the world with two simultaneous three-star restaurants.

Early life and career

Born at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California to Edward, a Marine drill instructor, and Betty Keller, a restaurateur [ [http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/09/05/050905crat_atlarge?currentPage=3 The Quest: The New Yorker ] ] , Thomas was the youngest of five boys. Four years after his parents divorced, the family moved east and settled in Palm Beach, Florida. In his teenage summers, he worked at the Palm Beach Yacht Club, starting as a dishwasher and quickly moving up to cook. It was here he discovered his passion for cooking and perfection in a hollandaise sauce.

During summers when work was slow, he took cook's jobs in Rhode Island. One summer he was discovered by French-born Roland Henin and tasked to his Dunes Club to cook staff meals. Under Henin's study, Keller learned the fundamentals of classical French cooking. 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. Thomas worked alone with the couple's grandmother as prep cook. 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. 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.

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. Rakel's refined French cuisine catered to the expensive tastes of Wall Street executives and received a two-star review from "The New York Times". 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.

The French Laundry

Following the split with his partner at Rakel, Keller took various consultant and chef positions in New York and Los Angeles. In the spring of 1992 he came upon an old French steam laundry built in Yountville, California in the 1890s that had been converted to a restaurant. He spent nineteen months raising $1.2 million from acquaintances and investors to purchase the restaurant, then quietly opened in the summer of 1994. Over the next few years the restaurant earned numerous awards, including the James Beard Foundation, gourmet magazines, the Mobil Guide (five stars), and the Michelin Guide (three stars).

Other restaurants and pursuits

Food and dining

url=http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/17/FDGSTNIME31.DTL]

Prior to the opening of The French Laundry, Thomas Keller started a small olive oil company called EVO, Inc. in 1992, with his girlfriend of the time, to distribute Provençal-style olive oil and red wine vinegar. Recently, Keller started marketing a line of signature white Limoges porcelain dinnerware by Reynaud called "Point" (in homage to French chef and restaurateur, Fernand Point) that he helped design and a collection of silver hollow ware by Christofle. He has also attached his name to a set of signature knives manufactured by MAC.

Publishing and film

In 1999, Thomas Keller published "The French Laundry Cookbook", which he considers his definitive book on cuisine. 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. In 2004 he published "The Bouchon Cookbook," although he gives most of the credit to Bouchon chef Jeffrey Cerciello. [cite web | title = French Laundry chef talks about celebrity life | publisher=MSN | date= May 22, 2007| url=http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?Feed=ACBJ&Date=20070522&ID=6943724]

Working on the film " Spanglish", Keller designed and taught star Adam Sandler to cook what is often called "the world's greatest sandwich", as a plausible example of what a talented bachelor gourmet might cook for himself. [cite web | url=http://gothamist.com/2005/10/26/make_yourself_a_spanglish_sandwich.php | author=Biran Van | Date =October 26, 2005 | publisher=Gothamist | Author=Brian Van | Date=October 26, 2005 | title=Make yourself a Spanglish sandwich] [cite web | url=http://members.cox.net/jjschnebel/SpangSand.html | title=Who cooked that up? The Spanglish sandwich | Author=J.J. Schnebel] Keller served as a consultant for the 2007 Pixar animated film Ratatouille, allowing the producer to intern in the French Laundry kitchen and designing a fancy layered version of ratatouille, "confit byaldi", for the characters to cook. In the American version he plays a cameo appearance as a restaurant patron (the part is played by Keller's former mentor Guy Savoy in the French version, and Ferran Adrià in the Spanish one). [cite news | url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/28/MNGGIQNA7M1.DTL | publisher=San Francisco Chronicle | date=June 28, 2007 | author=Stacy Finz | title=Bay Area flavors food tale: For its new film 'Ratatouille,' Pixar explored our obsession with cuisine]

Awards

* Best American Chef: California, James Beard Foundation, 1996
* Outstanding Chef: America, James Beard Foundation, 1997
* Chef of the Year, "Bon Appétit Magazine", 1998
* Voted #1 - Top Food, "Zagat Guide to the Bay Area", 1998-2003
* Five-Star Award, "Mobil Travel Guide", 1999 – 2004
* Favorite Restaurant in the U.S. - Restaurant Experts' Poll, "Food & Wine Magazine", 2000
* Top Restaurant for Food, "Wine Spectator Magazine", 2000
* America's Best Chef, "TIME Magazine", 2001
* Outstanding Wine Service Award, James Beard Foundation, 2001
* Outstanding Service Award, James Beard Foundation, 2003
* Best Restaurant in the World, for French Laundry in "Restaurant Magazine Top 50 Restaurants of the World" 1st place (2003, 2004), 3rd place (2005), 4th place (2006, 2007)
* Best Restaurant in the Americas, for French Laundry in "Restaurant Magazine Top 50 Restaurants of the World", 1st place for French Laundry (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007), and 2nd place for per se (2005, 2006, 2007)
* Best New Restaurant (Per Se), James Beard Foundation, 2005
* Michelin Guide New York, 3 Stars for per se, November 2005, 2006, 2007
* Michelin Guide Bay Area, 3 Stars for The French Laundry, October 2006, 2007

Bibliography

* Keller, T. "Bouchon". Artisan Publishers, 2004. ISBN 1-57965-239-5
* Keller, T. "The French Laundry Cookbook". Artisan Publishers, 1999. ISBN 1-57965-126-7
* Keller, T., Narlock, L. L., Carabetta, M. "The Food Lover's Companion to the Napa Valley: Where to Eat, Cook, and Shop in the Wine Country Plus 50 Irresistible Recipes", 2003. ISBN 0-8118-3619-3
* Keller, T., Vongerichten, J-G. New restaurants unveiled for AOL Time Warner Center. "Real Estate Weekly. 47"(46) p 29. Hagedorn Publication.

References

* Keller, Thomas. "The French Laundry Cookbook". Artisan Publishers, 1999. ISBN 1-57965-126-7
* Ruhlman, Michael. "The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection". Penguin Books, 2001. ISBN 0-14-100189-5
* Keller, Thomas. "Bouchon". Artisan Publishers, 2004. ISBN 1-57965-239-5
* Severson, Kim. "A Rat with a Whisk and a Dream." New York Times, 13 June 2007. Online at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/dining/13rata.html

External links

* [http://www.frenchlaundry.com The French Laundry official website]
* [http://www.nyrestaurantinsider.com/jan2006_keller.asp Interview by Restaurant Insider magazine: January 2006]
* [http://www.thegospeloffood.com Interview and profile of Keller and French Laundry]
* [http://www.frenchlaundryathome.com A home cook attempts every recipe in the French Laundry Cookbook]
* [http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/03/26/2/a-conversation-with-chef-thomas-keller Charlie Rose interview: March 26, 2008]