Thomas Keller | |
|---|---|
 Keller in 2009 | |
| Born | Thomas Aloysius Keller (1955-10-14)October 14, 1955 (age 70) Camp Pendleton,California, U.S. |
| Education | Apprenticeship |
| Spouse | Laura Cunningham |
| Culinary career | |
| Cooking style | French |
Current restaurant(s) | |
Thomas Aloysius Keller (born October 14, 1955) is an Americanchef,restaurateur andcookbook author. He and his landmarkNapa Valley restaurant,the French Laundry inYountville, California, have won multiple awards from theJames Beard Foundation, including Best California Chef in 1996 and Best Chef in America in 1997. The restaurant was a perennial winner in the annualRestaurant list of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World;[1] the voting process has since been changed to disallow previous winners from being considered.
In 2005, he was awarded the three-star rating in the inauguralMichelin Guide for New York City for his restaurantPer Se, and in 2006, he was awarded three stars in the inaugural Michelin Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area for The French Laundry. He is the only American chef to have been awarded simultaneous three-star Michelin ratings for two different restaurants.[2] His restaurants currently hold seven Michelin stars in total: three atPer Se, three at the French Laundry, and one atthe Surf Club Restaurant.[3]
Keller's mother was a restaurateur who employed Thomas as help when her cook got sick.[4] Four years after his parents divorced, the family moved east and settled inPalm Beach, Florida. In his teenage summers, he worked at the Palm Beach Yacht Club starting as a dishwasher and quickly moving up to cook, where he discovered his passion for cooking and perfection of thehollandaise sauce.[citation needed]
During summers, he worked as a cook inRhode Island. One summer, he was discovered by French-born Master ChefRoland Henin and was tasked to cookstaff meals atThe Dunes Club. Under Henin's study, Keller learned the fundamentals of classicalFrench 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 theHudson River valley inCatskill, New York. Thomas worked alone with the couple's grandmother as prep cook. Given free rein, he built a smokehouse tocure meats, developed relationships with local livestock purveyors and learned to cook entrails andoffal 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 variousMichelin-starred restaurants.[5]
After returning to America in 1984, he was hired aschef 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 ofWall Street executives and received a two-star review fromThe New York Times.[6] Its popularity waned as thestock market bottomed out and at the end of the 1980s, Keller left, unwilling to compromise his style of cooking to simplebistro fare.[7]
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 a restaurant inYountville, California, founded bySally Schmitt, in a space formerly occupied by an old French steam[8]laundry.[9] She and her husband Don purchased the building in 1978 and converted it into a restaurant.[10] Keller spent nineteen months raising $1.2 million from acquaintances and investors to purchase the restaurant, then re-opened it in 1994. Over the next few years the restaurant earned numerous awards, including from theJames Beard Foundation, gourmet magazines, theMobil Guide (five stars), and theMichelin Guide (three stars).[1]
In April 2009, Keller became engaged to longtime girlfriend and formergeneral manager at the French Laundry, Laura Cunningham.[11]
After the success of the French Laundry, Thomas and his brother, Joseph Keller (currently owner/chef of Josef's in Las Vegas), openedBouchon in 1998. Located down the street from the French Laundry, it serves moderately priced French bistro fare, with Bouchon Bakery opening next door a few years later (in 2006 Keller opened a branch of the bakery in the Time Warner Center in Manhattan). 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. On January 26, 2004, Keller opened his restaurant Bouchon inLas Vegas. On February 16, 2004, Keller's much-anticipatedPer Se restaurant opened in theTime Warner Center complex in New York under the helm of Keller's Chef de Cuisine, Jonathan Benno. 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 includingThe New Yorker andThe New York Times giving rave reviews. The latest restaurant, "ad hoc", opened in September 2006 inYountville with a different fixed pricecomfort food dinner servedfamily style every night. Originally intended to be a temporary project while Keller planned his lifelong dream restaurant for the location, servinghamburgers and wine,[12] he decided to make ad hoc permanent and find a new location for the hamburger restaurant due to its popularity.[13]
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 distributeProvençal-styleolive oil andred winevinegar. Recently, Keller started marketing a line of signature whiteLimoges porcelain dinnerware by Raynaud calledHommage Point (in homage to French chef and restaurateur,Fernand Point) that he helped and a collection of silverhollow ware by Christofle. He has also attached his name to a set of signature knives manufactured by MAC.[15]
Keller is the president of theBocuse d'Or U.S. team and was responsible for recruiting and training the 2009 candidates.[16] The former French LaundryChef de CuisineTimothy Hollingsworth won theBocuse d'Or USA semi-finals in 2008, and represented the U.S. in the world finals in January 2009 under Keller's supervision where he placed 6th.[17][18][19] On describing his reasons for accepting the Bocuse d'Or Team USA presidency, Keller stated, "When Chef [Paul] Bocuse calls you on the phone and says he’d like you to be president of the American team, you say, ‘Oui, chef’. He's the role model, the icon".[20]
In 2012 he announced he was at the point of his career when it was time to step away from the kitchen. The important thing, he said, is to make sure to give to young chefs the right things, the right mentoring because "if we're not truly working to raise the standards of our profession, then we're not really doing our job."[21] He permanently closed his restaurant TAK Room, located in Hudson Yards, during thecoronavirus pandemic. The throwback restaurant had been opened in March 2019, and had been his first New York restaurant in 15 years.[22]
In 1999, Thomas Keller publishedThe French Laundry Cookbook, which he considers his definitive book on cuisine. That year it won threeInternational 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.[23] Other cookbooks that he has written or contributed areThe Food Lover's Companion to the Napa Valley,Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide,Ad Hoc at Home (2009) andBouchon Bakery (2012). He provided an introduction or foreword toThe Vineyard Kitchen: Menus Inspired by the Seasons by Maria Helm Sinskey, "Happy in the Kitchen" by Michel Richard, "Indulge: 100 Perfect Desserts" by Claire Clark (head pastry chef at the French Laundry), the new publication of "Ma Gastronomie" by Fernand Point, "Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing" by Micheal Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. He is also featured in "My Last Supper" by Melanie Dunea.[citation needed]
Working on the filmSpanglish, Keller designed and taught starAdam 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. The sandwich resembles a typicalBLT, with the addition of a fried egg.[24][25] In an interview withVogue Man Arabia he described the BLT as "the perfect sandwich".[26] Keller served as a consultant for the 2007Pixar animated filmRatatouille, allowing the producer to intern in the French Laundry kitchen and designing a fancy layered version ofratatouille, "confit byaldi", for the characters to cook. In the American version he makes acameo appearance as a restaurant patron (the part is played by one of Keller's mentorsGuy Savoy in the French version, andFerran Adrià in the Spanish one).[27] Keller is frequently referenced in the restaurant workplace comedy-dramaThe Bear, with Keller making a special guest appearance as himself in the Season 3 episode "Forever".[28] A different character in the series portrayed byJoel McHale is very loosely based on Keller, although with exaggerated negative character traits.[29]
Keller currently has three online cooking classes atMasterclass.com.[30][31][32]
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