Thomas Keller
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| Born | October 14, 1955 Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, CA |
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| Cooking style | French |
| Education | Apprenticeship |
| 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) |
- This article is about the chef. For other persons named Thomas Keller, see Thomas Keller (disambiguation).
Thomas Keller (born October 14, 1955) is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook writer. He and his landmark restaurant, The French Laundry in the Napa Valley of Yountville, California, have won multiple awards from the prestigious James Beard Foundation, notably the Best California Chef in 1996 and the Best Chef in America in 1997. In 2005, he was awarded a three star rating by the Michelin Guide to New York for his restaurant Per Se, and in 2006, he was awarded a three star rating by the Michelin Guide to the Bay Area for his restaurant The French Laundry.
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[edit] Early life and career
Born at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California to Edward, a Marine drill instructor, and Betty Keller, 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, including Taillevent, Guy Savoy, and Le Pré Catalan through 1983.
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.
[edit] The French Laundry
Following the split with his partner at Rakel, Keller bounced between various consultant and chef positions in New York and Los Angeles, the low point in his career. Nevertheless, he never gave up on the restaurant business. His search for the dream restaurant ended in the spring of 1992, when he showed up in front of an old French steam laundry built in Yountville, California in the 1890s that had been converted to a restaurant and instantly fell in love with the place. He spent the next nineteen months scraping together $1.2 million from acquaintances and investors to purchase it. In the summer of 1994, The French Laundry quietly opened and over the next few years earned numerous prestigious awards from the James Beard Foundation, gourmet magazines, and eventually earned the Five Star Award from the Mobil Travel Guide in 1999, which it has held ever since.
The menu at The French Laundry consists of prix fixe (fixed price, $240.00 USD per person circa 2007) tastings of usually five to nine dishes. Keller is often praised for his signature dishes bearing whimsical names, such as Oysters and Pearls (savory pearl tapioca custard with oyster and caviar), Tongue in Cheek (braised beef cheek and calf's tongue), Soup and Sandwich (miniature grilled cheese sandwich with a small demitasse of clear tomato soup), Surf and Turf (lobster tail with sauteed foie gras), Peas and Carrots (lobster knuckle meat wrapped in a pancake with carrot and butter emulsion sauce and pea shoots), and Coffee and Doughnuts (miniature fried doughnuts with a small demitasse of espresso).
[edit] Other restaurants and pursuits
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. Located just 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). In January 26, 2004, a Las Vegas outpost of Bouchon opened in the Venezia Tower of The Venetian Hotel and Casino. On February 16, 2004, Keller's much anticipated Per Se restaurant in the Time Warner Center complex in New York opened under the helm of Keller's Chef de Cuisine, Jonathan Benno. Per Se was an immediate hit on the New York restaurant scene, with reservations booked months in advance and publications like The New Yorker and The New York Times lavishing it with rave reviews. The latest restaurant called "ad hoc" opened in September 2006 in Yountville with comfort foods served family style.
In 1999, Thomas Keller published The French Laundry Cookbook. 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.
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.
[edit] 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, Restaurant Magazine, 2003-2004
- Best New Restaurant (Per Se), James Beard Foundation, 2005
- Michelin Guide New York, 3 Stars for Per Se, November 2005
- Michelin Guide Bay Area, 3 Stars for The French Laundry, October 2006
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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
