The Watch - Ep. 56: 'The Andy Greenwald Podcast' With Chef Eric Ripert

Episode Date: July 13, 2016

Andy Greenwald talks to four-star chef Eric Ripert about his brilliant new memoir, '32 Yolks,' the importance of sauces, and what it's like getting sauced with Anthony Bourdain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to the Andy Greenwald podcast. Hello, my name is Andy Greenwald. This is my podcast. Guys, did you know my podcast is part of the Ringer Podcast Network? There are so many podcasts on the Ringer Podcast Network. I personally think you should subscribe to all of them, from Channel 33 to Jam Session, keeping it 1600.

MLB show, NBA show. Do you like shows? We have a show for you. We also have a show called The Watch, and that's the show I do with Chris Ryan, and you probably figured it out, but the Andy Greenwald podcast is now just kind of the Black Sheep Nephew of the Watch. we're going to show up on the same feed.

So if you subscribe to the watch on iTunes or SoundCloud, you will also get this interview show where I talk to people who I am enthusiastic about. Today's guest is a person I was so excited and honored to meet. He is chef Eric Repair. He is an acclaimed chef. He is an author. He's a television host.

He is the co-owner of a restaurant in New York City called La Bernadine that has four stars from the New York Times, three stars from Michelin. It's pretty amazing. He is now the author of a memoir called 32 Yokes from my mother's table to working the line. It was published by Random House. And I have to say, I was going to read this book no matter what because I love reading books about food.

I love thinking about food, eating it, writing about it, whatever. And I was always been a big fan of repair in the way he cooks fish and the way he pals around with Tony Bourdain on Tony Bourdain shows and et cetera. I read this book and I was blown away on an emotional level because this is more than a book about food. This is a really remarkable and unique exploration of what it means to be a child, to have foundational memories that are some of which are food based, some of which aren't. He really dives into his past and the emotional connection that he felt with food and also the emotional trauma he suffered due to a relatively unstable home life. And it takes him all the way through childhood, through this really wild, I would say apprenticeship, except it was really a job with Chef Joel Robichon in Paris in the 80s. 32 Yokes is a really good book. And I was so excited to have Chef Eric repair come into the studio here, the Earwolf studio here in New York City, taking a break from the line to join me.

He was very forthcoming, very open about his experiences writing the book, his experiences as a child, as a chef. He's still friends with Joel Robichon. And we talked about his TV series of Vec Erierec on PBS. We talked about the future of fine dining and et cetera. And I asked about a green curry yogurt emulsion sauce, goat yogurt emulsion sauce, because I just can't help myself. Thanks guys for listening to the Andy Greenwald podcast. Thanks to the Scottish band Churches for my theme music. And let's get into it.

My interview with Chef Eric Prepare. I have to say, I was going to say even before we began the interview, I met you briefly a few years ago just to shake hands at one of the 0.0 events. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Those crazy events. But one of the ones in the basement of the Ace Hotel for the show, and it was such a perfect moment for me because in the moment I was introduced to you, Tony Bourdain and Sean Brock were busy showing you that they had a secret stash of Pappy Van Winkle behind the bar. Yes, I remember that. Because I know, you know, I had Tony on the show before, and I know that some of what he does is for camera and who he really is as a person.

But to have that image perfectly played in front of me that he really was sneaking you whiskey behind the camera. No, no, he was. It's not all an act. That was not part of any show. No, he was real. And I imagine the show that went on after that moment was probably more intense than any show we've seen on TV

because that bottle went. For sure. The bottle went pretty quickly. Well, that was the idea, right? No, but to your credit, you acted very modest. You said, well, maybe, I don't know, maybe just a little bit. Well, I said that many times. That was the strategy.

I'm very excited to talk to you about, we started, by the way. Okay, okay. But about La Bernardin, about your restaurant, about your career. But I specifically wanted to frame the interview around this amazing memoir that you've just put out this year, 32 yokes. I found it incredibly insightful, but also very very very. very moving. And that's specifically what I wanted to talk to you about even more than the food aspect of it. Would you like a little bit of whiskey now just to get some to prepare? I guess just begin at the beginning, which was why the memoir and why now? Why was this the time that you felt it was right

to revisit this part of your life? I was approached by a random house when I was 43 years old, to the M. 51. So it took me a long time. But for two years, I was contemplating the idea, didn't believe in a memoir. I thought I was way too young. And I didn't want to write something just to write something. I wanted some story line that would be inspirational.

And I honestly believe that I didn't really have an interesting story to say. But then after two years of good harassment, I took a page of, and I wrote on the page the chronology of my life

as a young child and so on. And I was looking at it, and I was like, I have something to say. And that was the cue to start the project. Are you a person who lives a lot in the past or in memories, or was just the act of doing that eye-opening? No, I'm very much in the present, actually. I do not, I'm very at peace and reconciled with the past.

I rarely go back into it. And then I'm really focused on now. This is what is truly astonishing about the memoir and why I recommend it to people even people who don't have never heard the word nape, I think, would get something from this memoir for precisely the reasons that you're saying. There is an incredible spirit of generosity in the memory, which I think it's very rare and hard to come by in that you, from the perspective you have now, you treat the characters, the actors in your life, heroes and villains with a certain amount of empathy. Is that fair to say? Oh, for sure. And actually, the villains would change their name as well to make sure that they are not recognizable. Right, so they're not strung up. By their name.

That's for sure. Yeah, I mean, it was not a tell-all. It was not a vengeance. It was writing something that would potentially inspire people, of course, in my industry. Young people who were coming to the workforce. and also to couples who have children and have difficulties, and sometimes divorce can be a great thing for family and children, but in my case and many cases it's bad, it's a catastrophe,

and therefore I open to my experience in the book. Yes, the ability that you have, and we should credit your co-writer, your co-author. Yeah, Veronica Chambers. It's extremely talented. And the two of you worked closely. Thousands of hours. Wow. Did you do work actually at the restaurant?

Is that correct? Yeah, we did that in a basement. We have under the restaurant a library with a lot of cookbooks, and we were sitting there two, three times a week, talking for hours for almost three, four years. I love the idea of a library down there as if a cook on the line can forget something and suddenly say, one minute going to the bathroom, run and remember how to make a mother sauce. Not quite like that, but we have about thousand books and it's to inspire. the cooks and some of them, the sous chef have access to it

and can look at inspiration and then... Did the sous chefs know not to bother a chef when he was delving into his soul downstairs? Yeah, of course we say it's, you know, do not disturb. Do you think the chef's mentality and the need for preparation and Misan Plus helped you divide your time when you were working on the book in terms of all of your obligations from the restaurant to TV and beyond? Probably, I mean, you know, I have probably applied in my life. the wisdom that we accumulate in a kitchen to organize ourselves.

Right, organization is key. And I probably apply that to the book as well, for sure. In the way you approached it and divided it. Well, I wanted, I mean, the chronology was simple. I mean, from age four to 24. So it was easy to go by year. And then I wanted to make sure that we were very precise and detail-oriented in the description of every

scene. Because very often it's a bit controversial and I wanted to make sure that nobody's going to come back at me and say it was not really like that. Right. It was because we went into those tiny tiny details. I feel like since this is an audio medium, I need to describe the fact that when

you were talking about the period of time, your hands were basically gesturing to a large fish and when you talked about each chapter you appeared to be removing pin bones from it. Yes, something like that. That's the training of a chef. That was amazing. I saw the beautiful fillets emerging. So specifically about your ability to write about your childhood.

Can you, for people who have not yet read the book, the book begins with your parents before you were. You described their meeting, who they were. And for a brief time, it's an almost impossibly glamorous life in South of France. Young people, attractive, cosmopolitan people. Your mother was elegant. She ran a dress store for many years. your father played the horn, is that correct?

Yes. His day job was to be a banker. Right, but he had a second life. I was making him even more romantic. But is that a fair description of what you were born in. For sure, and they were living in Centropay in the 70s. Not bad. It's not bad, but when you think Centrope's 70s, couple,

those two things don't always go. Yeah, so the couple didn't survive those years. Right. The memories of your childhood memories are. so close to the surface in the book and they're so deeply felt, and that comes across in the writing. Were you able to equally access the happy memories of when the brief time they were together as you were the difficult memories? Yes.

I am very candid about my past. I can remember the good memories, obviously, and they are in the book. And at the same time, the painful ones, of course, I remember. And I have no problem to share, the good and the bad. But there's a vulnerability to that because I think that one thing that we forget as we get older as things calluses develop or whatever

is how pure childish emotion is. We say childish almost as if it's a pejorative but it's not. It's a very pure feeling and it's almost too intense to look at even in memory. Children, young children

are extremely smart and we know that. And the everything and they absorb everything with the eyes of a child, like you mentioned, which is very pure, in a sense. And I went back into my childhood and I wanted to write the book with the eyes of that child. And then when I passed my childhood and when I went into the kitchen, I wanted to write the book from the young Eric repair that was 17 years old in the kitchen, not from Eric repair, who's 51 today. and looking at his past. So I immersed myself into the past.

And it was actually an easy process to be 17 again, and 18, 19, 20, 20, I mean, whatever it was. Was it equally easy to be 6, 7, 8, though? Because the events that you describe with the breakup of your parents' marriage, the entry into your life of a stepfather who was, I don't want to say borderline abusive, was abusive for sure. That's, I guess what I'm saying is, When you go back to a 17, 18-year-old, Eric, who was going to the kitchen for the first time,

there's a very clear through line in your professional life to that person. Obviously, there's a through line through the happiness and the pain of your childhood to who you are now as well, but it might not be as easy to access or as pleasant to access or even to identify. I was very surprised that my long-term memory is pretty amazing. It certainly seemed to be. And my short term is really bad. That's the pet event. I gave up something over the years, but the long-term memory is incredibly vivid.

And when I, if you ask me a question about my childhood in a south of France or in Andorra, somewhere where I grew up, I can go back to the, to it immediately. I can remember the smells, the colors, the city, everything, the surrounding, everything very vividly. Were you aware in your childhood, you seem certainly in the writing of the book, very aware of almost the duality of your childhood. And on one hand, you are being treated very well in terms of your access to great food, great restaurants at the time. Your mother sounds like an amazing show. Everyone in your family, by the way, the jealousy is very, very strong on this side of the microphone. but also the pain that was there too. So were you aware at the time of almost the split extremity of your experience that you were living very well in one sense,

but internally there was something else going on? Well, for sure. I mean, I was spoiled definitely for lunch and dinner. I was living in a very wealthy environment, a very protected environment. I didn't miss. anything that I need it materialistically. Emotionally, of course, when you have

parents who are divorced and you're dealing with a stepfather who's a bully and you have challenges here and there, it creates some sadness, it creates potential anger at times. And it was my life like that. On one side I was very protected. On one side I was missing a lot. of not only affection, but, you know,

closeness with my family. What was the experience like admitting the anger that you harbored towards your mother at the time? It does sound like, I mean, when your father left the house, you described being very angry. Well, she left him. She left him, right? The two of you left and moved away.

But you were able to express the fact that you were very angry at her at the time, but you wrote it with this air. of understanding and empathy towards what she was suffering. Of course, because it's always cause and consequences. And if my mother left my father, it was reasons.

But at the time, I was a young child, and my mother didn't want to explain to me in details why she took that decision. Today, I would understand why she left my father. At the time, she was keeping that hidden from me. And therefore, as a young child, I kind of blame her a little bit or maybe more than a little bit for basically breaking up my family, my father and mother being together.

Is your mother still alive? Yeah. How was this experience been for her? So she read the book. Her English is pretty good actually. Oh, but you didn't translate it for her. No. That way you could get away with more.

I didn't translate, but she didn't need any translation. Yeah, she got it. And she was, I think, emotional about it. And she wished I wouldn't have share everything. But ultimately, she's happy that the book is out and that ultimately she sees the inspirational side of the book. So she's fine. She's reconciled with her past as well.

The book begins with this amazing sequence of her taking it to Chef Jacques. a chef who became a very influential figure in your life. You describe everything that he served you with an airing detail, down to the chocolate mousse. When you speak to her now, was she aware of the gift she was giving you then? Was she aware of how each spoonful was imprinting itself on you? Or was that more just that was how she expressed her affection for you as well, and it was just how it was existing in the moment.

She wasn't aware of the bigger picture. I don't think she was aware of the bigger picture, neither myself. You know, I thought every kid in the world was eating like me and had those incredible meals three times a day, including breakfast. But, no, she was living her life and she was expressing her love through the food mostly because she was a busy woman and she was struggling as well. And I was very young and it was a way for her to. show her love, appreciation, for us to be able to communicate at the table, to have a good time.

And it was a natural process. It was not a lesson that she was teaching me. Right, and not at the time. Not at the time. Something else that I was really struck by is that it's clear now because of your career, looking back, that the appetite that you developed at a young age was very much tied to your passion. It inspired you. It sustained you in many ways. but in reading the book I was very impressed by the way you also identified that appetite as a vulnerability

in the world that was around you there's specifically a scene that must have been much of it must have been painful to dredge up but with Hugo's the stepfather that comes into your life and you talk about how you had how sacred the snack was in the middle of the day of Lugutei and he knew to poke you there you know what I mean in the way

the thing that was most important to you is also the thing that makes you the most vulnerable to those who are bigger, stronger, and can poke you in the most tender spot. Yes. Well, I had a lot of vulnerability when it was eating times. Does that continue? Yes. If someone interrupts your meal, is it?

Lunch and dinner, I'd say great. But the snack was interesting because I would come back from school, and it was his opportunity to be alone with me. and it's where he was taking advantage and being a bully and also playing tricks on me to make me react. And it was a war. But ultimately, I can tell you one thing. And I know that as a parent today, I have a 12 years old.

And if you start a war with an eight years old or nine or ten years old, as an adult, you guarantee to lose. Absolutely. They outsmart you, buy a lot. That's right. You're playing the short game and they're playing the long game. Exactly. There's going to be a time when it's good that you learn that early. And obviously the book continues with your childhood and your early experiences in culinary school.

But I wanted to jump forward slightly to when you make it to Paris. How old were you when you arrived in Paris? I am 17 years old. You're 17 years old and you have a job at Le Tour d'Argent. Yes. For those who don't know, can you describe this restaurant? Because here we think of, I think of Le Bernardin as an old restaurant. Tour d'Argent was 400 years old?

At the time. In 1982, 400 years old, the king was going there. It was the restaurant of the kings. For many generations of kings, during the French Revolution, they destroyed La Tour d'Argent because it was a symbol of the royal status. They rebuilt it. Then it was called Café Anglais. Actually, if you watch Babette Feist, she's the chef of Café Anglais, which is La Tour d'Argent.

And then the name came back again, La Tour d'Argent. Anyway, they were celebrating their 400-year anniversary. I was 17. They were three-star Michelin at the time at their best in 1982. This is, I don't think there is a comparison in this country to something that is that old and still as essential, or it seemed as essential to the life of the city or the city. the country. Is that fair? I think it's fair because, I mean, I have never seen a restaurant in America that is 400 and something years old. I think I think if you make it to 40,

you're pretty remarkable in this country. One of the things that I love when you write about arriving there is that you admit very readily that you seem to have no real skills for being there despite your education that you had just completed. Yes, I mean, look, we all went to school, I mean, hopefully. And when you graduate, you're very proud and you have your certificate in your hand and you're ready to go work in any field. I mean, my field was the kitchen, obviously.

But anyone who has a graduation believes is going to be helpful and has mastered a lot of challenges and is ready to help. That was my attitude. But in fact, when you graduate, you're a beginner. And in a kitchen, you learn very quickly that you are a beginner.

Yeah. Of course. And it's natural. It's normal for everyone. Nobody is born with knife skills. Yeah. You have to be trained. Nobody is born with many skills that are required in the kitchen or any other field.

You learn most of the time the hard way. If it's not the hard way very often, you don't learn fully the experience. Yeah. So I was very lucky to learn everything 100%. right away. 17 years old. But you had no choice. I have no choice.

But you do speak of the fact that despite not having the knife skills necessary or the collaborative skills necessary, you think maybe the fact that you had good taste or that you came from a different region of the country,

these sort of intangibles helped you. And I was wondering if now, when you were hiring people for the restaurant, how do you consider things that can be taught and things that cannot be taught when hiring people?

Well, we can teach skills and discipline and rigor and knowledge about ingredients and so on but one thing we cannot teach his talent so the talent someone who has a lot of talent potentially will be able to be not only a craftman I mean someone an expert in craftsmanship but someone will be able to create and basically be an artist in a sense if we believe that cooking is an art someone who doesn't have that talent

will be a craftman and it's a big difference it's like someone who's able to have a vision and create or someone who's and it's nothing wrong about that but someone who's duplicating and doing it proper way but without any other quality.

It's like someone who's going to be painting a building perfectly and it's okay. I'm not being condescending. But you have someone who can create, see a wall and suddenly create a mural. Right. And that's the difference. And someone who's going to do a beautiful mural has to have mastered the art of painting a wall

and then have that extra talent. Right. Picasso could paint a field of flowers that quote unquote looked like a field of flowers before he became Picasso. Or Dali could paint a clock that wasn't melting. Yes. Before he learned to melt it. Absolutely. Do you have, though, is it as simple as having a test?

Not a test, that's the wrong word, but something that you look for specifically. I know there's a probably folk tale, you know, about the chef saying, cook me an omelet. And then in that omelet you see the chef's past president future, or is that way too reductive? I think that was the old school way of hiring people. I don't care if they know how to make an omelet. It doesn't matter. We hire people on the fact that they can be team players, that they are passionate,

that they have a certain understanding and experience in a kitchen, but it doesn't have to be too much. then we take care of the rest. They work hard. Our duty is to make sure that we're going to give them as much as we can the right education and potentially

if we see someone who has the gift to push him to the extreme in a nice way, of course. We're coming to the not nice way. Yeah, in a nice way, of course. But in a kitchen, the most difficult thing to achieve is the sauce.

Because the sauce basically catching flavors in the liquid, which is very difficult to do. And those flavors have to be stable. And it's when we see the talent in a cook at that stage. It's when we see someone who has it or doesn't have it. If you don't have it, it's very difficult to go further. And I give you an example.

When you make coffee or tea, when you brew the coffee, you drink it right away, it tastes a certain way. If you wait two hours, it's different. Four hours later is another flavor. At the end of the day, it's disgusting. So imagine a sauce where you have 10, 20 ingredients, and you're trying to balance that sauce

and stabilize that sauce for a couple of hours. It requires an enormous amount of knowledge and talent. That talent and knowledge that goes beyond three lines in a cookbook. You have to be alive with it in the moment and responding to it. You cannot quantify flavors. It's like music. It's not tangible.

It's in your head. Flavors of mushrooms, sage, whatever you decide to captivate, do not exist as tangible. They are in your head and your palate guide you. So it's very tricky. And some people are never able to do that. Someone who was able to do that

is the figure that dominates the last third of your book, chef Joelle Rovichon. Who's in the news today, we're recording this in July, is returning once again to New York City. Yes, I'm very happy about that. Are you happy about that? That's my first question. Yes, of course. I talked to him yesterday.

Okay, well, we'll come to that because, again, as much as I think it's hard to communicate the history of Latour d'Argent, how can you best communicate the towering figure of Joel Robichon in the early 80s in France on the landscape? He was just 38 years old, but was basically a stride to the city or astride the culinary world, almost like it like some kind of God. He was a god. And acted like this.

And he's still a god in my world. Robichon is I mean, I don't know how you can quantify genius or not, but he's considered

the genius in my industry. And he was very young. He was the talk of Paris. Then he went to Japan and then he expanded his reputation throughout the world. He was considered the best chef

of the 20th century. I was young in his kitchen and he was extremely rigorous and demanding and detail-oriented, something that I have never seen anywhere else except in his kitchen. There's a,

and I think it's worth noting that I think as much as it exists in the American imagination, the domineering head chef, I think often in the imagination it goes to a place of physical violence and abuse It doesn't seem as if Robichon exhibited that so much as it was this unrelenting disappointment and criticism.

And no matter what you did, and you did, as you described well in your book, you did everything good and bad. Good and bad. It was never enough. No, because perfection is very subjective. Actually, the beauty is that you never attain perfection. But it's also very challenging. and Robichon was

very tough on himself and therefore very tough on his team not in terms of like being violent or screaming at us because he was not a screamer he was not physical which kitchens were physical at that time in France

he was not like that but he was so demanding and when he he would not get the result from the team that he was expecting you could see the pain in him like killing him and at the same time

he will come at you and talk to you and say I can't believe you did that I mean tested I don't see the flavors and he will go on and on and on and it was something almost like laughable but obviously when you were the

victim of the criticism you were not laughing but if you would make a mistake at 8 o'clock at night he would start by saying, this is not right repair. And then at 8.30 he will go back to it and say, I can't believe you did that dish like that.

And how can you sabotage the... You have no respect for the ingredients. And then at 10 o'clock at night, he will come back and say, no, really, you want to kill this restaurant? I mean, you don't care about the clients. You don't care about your career. You want to do... And he will go on and then for

weeks, he will remind you the mistake that you made. And I think he really felt it in... I mean, he was hurt inside. He could not let go. He could not let go. You described this dish that has the most boring name of all, a cold lobster salad. Oh, God.

It is anything but as simple as described there. It's a masterpiece. It's a masterpiece, but it is essentially not reproducible. It's impossible. And yet you did it. And yet we did it. His demands were, to our views, irrationals. And we thought we would never be able to.

to do it. But everybody in the team was pushing himself so hard and we were working so hard for him and with him because he was with us. He was not this kind of chef who just appeared at lunchtime or dinner time. That miracles

were happening and we were able to do things that looked like it's not going to happen ever in a century. On this salad there was something like 90 composed dots of sauces that you had to just hand those were part of the decor. of the plates and it was

tiny space in between every tiny dots that were basically all over the outside of the plate and then the plating of the lobster and the vegetable it was just crazy insane. But this is where my head goes, start spinning because

Picasso didn't have to paint the same painting twice and you begin to think where is the division between artistic genius which the dish was when he composed it for sure and then he composes it once and then asks you to reproduce it. Now, I think cooking in general, and tell me if you disagree, is this interesting

collision between art and work and repetition and inspiration? Yes. Ultimately, in cooking, we have to be consistent. Yeah. Because it will be very unfair for one table to have one dish a certain way and then the other table to have it differently, or for you to love one dish because it's, again, in a certain way and then come back a week later

and see the dish completely change. So we have to have consistency and consistency is very, very difficult to keep, to attain and to keep. And therefore, whatever duty I had in that kitchen was already difficult

to make sure that we were able to reproduce 10 times a night of, it didn't matter how many times we had to reproduce was something that is borderline a miracle. But did a little part of your soul die every time you labor over this, you accomplish this impossibility, and then maybe you peek in the dining room and you see some businessman not even look down as he smears the lobster through the sauce? I didn't have time to think about that.

You were already making the next one, right? I was just so focused. But I'm ultimately very grateful about Joel Robichon, who's my mentor? Yeah. You speak of him beautifully. You call him your hero at that time. For sure. And today he still is.

And I talked to him last night. He's coming back to New York. He's happy to be back. And I think it's a great addition to the city. Well, you talk about your time there, how all the young chefs reacted to the stress differently. And you describe your own reaction as you would be the tourist. You would outwardly be calm. You would show up, make your coffee, never be rattled.

Yes. that's amazing that's an amazing performance but you know and we can talk about this a little bit more in a moment but you speak often about Buddhism and the role of being present

you said right when we sat down in your life is it fair to say that at that time the outward tranquility was not necessarily matched internally and if not when did that divide begin to balance out I discovered Buddhism actually when I came to America

and I started to really study in the mid-90s, end of the 90s. Today, I definitely practice every day and it has a huge impact on my life that is translated in a secular way. Yeah, there's a huge presence in the book, I think. And you can maybe feel it in a book. At the time, it was a passive, aggressive reaction

to the discipline and the rigor of that kitchen. Yeah. And I didn't want to... a show that I was neither scared or stressed or anything. I just wanted to show that I was cool. Right. Even if you were not. Inside, I was boiling. Yeah. But I remember some guys were shaking so much because they were so stressed. And I was like, I'd rather to die than shake. But inside, my stomach would be like a knot, you know, but I would never. Ever, ever shake, my precision was incredible.

One of the more surprising things in the book is when you were away from Robichon to do a military service, mandatory military service, and then he calls you. Yes. And you go back. Now, without being too much of an amateur psychologist, did you, in writing the book unpack this idea of, you know, you actually outwardly say, you write this about the various father figures that you had in your life after the passing of your own father. Sure. Do you draw a direct connection to something as specific is your willingness to go back to try to once again please him and learn? Is there a connection to be drawn between the lack of father figure in your life and that relationship, or am I fishing too much now? I don't think so.

So it's my last week as a military. I don't know what I'm going to do in my life, but I have no plan to go back to Paris and to work at Roe Bichon. The knot in your stomach is uncrenched. It takes me by surprise because he calls me and ask me if I want to come back and give me this prestigious position of chef Poissonier. And when I say, I don't know, you have to think about it. He says to me, you have one minute to say yes or no. I can't believe you're still friends with it.

In my mind, I think very quickly, but I'm like, that opportunity and to be with such a genius will not happen again. So you have no choice to say yes. and you're going to have two years of nightmares, but that will be ultimately, you know, coming back in a positive way in the future. True, but I think even that takes a certain amount of maturity because when I was that age, I couldn't imagine two years.

Two years is forever, you know, thinking of it like a... Well, I didn't know if it would be two years. Because you might get five. I was like maybe I'm not going to make it. But, you know, he told me, he said, look, because I told him on the phone, I remember saying, look, I'm not capable of

doing the task that you're giving me. And he said, don't worry, we're going to teach you. Don't even think about it. We understand that you don't know how to do it, but you will after a certain period of time. And you did. Yes.

The book ends with you departing from America for the first time. I hope that ending on a cliffhanger means that there will be a 33 yokes, that there will be a sequel at some point. Lately, I'm just like, thinking about the book that we just did. That's right. I don't want to rush you.

And I'm not thinking about another book, but you never know. I wondered, because you don't get to the part of America, I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about what unites French chefs in America. Because from an outward perspective, you spoke a little bit about Palladene in the book. Jean-Béil Palladene, who you went to work for. But from a completely... tell me if I could be completely wrong, but I see, I sense, you know, your calmness as a person and what you do in the kitchen. I see Ubert Keller with his ponytail. Yes. I see Danielle

Balloude, you know, spraying people with jereboons of champagne. Yes. And it's not hard to draw the conclusion that there is a free-spiritedness and liveliness and perhaps black sheep aspect to French chefs that have made their name in America. Is that fair or am I drawing a small sample size? I think it's something that we have in common in between French chefs and American chefs and all chefs around the world that basically we are dysfunctional. Okay. So in fact, if I was in Paris, I would see the same thing. Yes.

I would see the spraying and the ponytails. Okay, that's fair enough. I want to say, so I had the pleasure of visiting LeBernadown recently for my anniversary for lunch. Thank you. And it was a wonderful experience. I was thinking about, I just finished your book, and I was thinking about the experience you had with Chef Shock where he recognized your appreciation for the food

and drew you in. Yes. And I was wondering how you were able to continue that spirit, because obviously LeBernandandan is not a neighborhood restaurant. It is a different experience. It's a four-star, three-star, four-star New York Times, three-star Michelin restaurant. Yes. But my favorite thing about the meal,

in addition to the food, which I have some, I want to ask you specifically about something, was we had this young Somalié and she immediately started asking about what I liked and what I wanted to do and listen to me and then steered me to this bottle of Sanoban that I would never have thought of it. Right, see you know, it's your list. But she drew me in, she said, well, this is what I would drink.

You know, and it felt very, it was a human touch that was so warm and that's what you walk out remembering almost as much as the sauce. Yes. How do you maintain that in a restaurant that is on such a different level. Well, people come to us to have an experience. And in the dining room, the captains, the sommelier, whoever has contact with the client must have the capability of reading the mind of the clientele.

And we have to deliver an experience that is memorable. And we have people who come to celebrate an anniversary, a birthday, some people come. some people come because they are foodies, some people are in love, and some people get engaged, some people do business at the table. So the waiter has to read the mind of the client, and then depending of what you are seeking at Le Bernardin,

we deliver that. So it's a hundred or a thousand, not a hundred, not a thousand, but a hundred individual performances every day. Yes. It's never the same restaurant, days in a row or even from one table to another. No, absolutely not.

But, you know, like when I walk in a dining room, I see the clients. I know right away who are the foodies, who are the business people, who are the people celebrating. I mean, it's not difficult. The foodies, they look at me like they want to talk to me. They want me to go to the table. But they're also taking pictures. Of course.

I see them. People in love is easy to see that. Even in a street, you know when they are. People in business, you can. read the table, you know that their focus on a discussion and so on. So it's our job to do that is not that difficult, but you have to pay attention. The thing that excited me the most on the plate, there were two dishes in particular. One was there's an octopus carpaccio that had an anticucho sauce.

Yes. And the other was, my wife's entree was the snapper with a green curry goat yogurt emulsion. The reason I was so taken with those dishes is, I'm glad you mentioned earlier, was the sauce. And because in both cases, I know. the flavors. I've had an anticucho sauce at a Peruvian restaurant. I've had a green curry at an Indian restaurant. But these seem to me like the greatest expression of what French gastronomy can do, which is you were open to these ingredients and these flavors, but you ran them through your perspective and that din, that kitchen and that dining room. So they were a very

specifically designed for the restaurant. Design for that restaurant. For the format of Le Bernardin, yes. Right. Which is a seafood restaurant. Therefore, the sauce can not overwhelm the flavors of the It's supposed to enhance the qualities of the fish. And everything in a plate is actually supposed to make the fish the star of the plate. Right. The sauce, in my opinion, is essential in cooking to bring together the main ingredient and the other ingredient in a dish. I love sauce.

Obviously, I was well trained by Joel Robichon. but I don't see cooking fish without putting sauce in it. But in addition to highlighting the fish, what I loved was you were able to, there's an excitement and curiosity about the world in different cultures and different cuisines. Yes. How do you strike that balance? Because I know from reading this book and also seeing you on television on your show and with Tony, your great appetite for other types of food.

You are not eating four-star French food every. night. I do actually. You taste it, but maybe not at home or on the weekends. That's right. You have a very different relationship to it than we do. But because of the nature of LeBernadene and the clientele and the reputation, you can't, you know, there's this idea that it has to be, I can't put words on this. Maybe you should.

But there was an excitement and a raciness and a curiosity about those sauces that I loved experiencing in a dining room that was very calm and respectful. The fact that I live in New York expose me to many different cultures, different flavors, different ingredients. I eat out, of course, to see what's going on. I travel as well. I'm inspired by my surrounding because if cooking is an art,

inspiration can come only from experiences. And therefore, I bring that back into the restaurant and we work on dishes inspired by experiences that I had or some souschev who closely work with me and we make sure that we bring it to Le Bernardin making sure that the fish will remain the star of the plate so it means that we can have like some strong flavors but never too pungent never too strong it we always look for a very harmonious combinations

But one of the main takeaways from this book is your deep, deep love of a more rustic cooking. Yes. You speak so beautifully of your experience with a farmer named Georges and your experiences with him and at his table, which is a very different sort of cooking and a different sort of eating. Do you feel any desire to bring that to New York diners or to diners at a different restaurant? Because as you said, Le Bernardin is a specific restaurant. It is your co-owner, it is your home. But the fish is the star there. You're never going to have a dripping roast of something on the menu there.

No, I'm very passionate about Le Bernardin and very dedicated. And it takes my entire professional life. I have a restaurant in Cayman Island as well called Blue, which is basically Le Bernardin by the beach in the Caribbean with a sense of place as well. I have no desire to expand the... do anything else. I'm very content being an artisan in that restaurant, taking care of the kitchen,

taking care of the interaction with the dining room and the clients. And right now, I'm not thinking of, and for years, I have not been thinking about opening anything else. Yeah, I guess selfishly I just want to be able to access these same flavors that you described so well in the book,

and I'm not going to gascon any time soon. You know, my experience in a farm actually was, and eating sole food, basically, from the South of France. was essential because I believe that refined food without sole food, which is basically the backbone of the dish, is just pretty food and it's boring. I can imagine. I wanted to ask you, since I have you here, about sort of the lay of the land.

You're obviously a very busy and working chef in New York City. You see what's happening here. You see what's happening across this country and across the world. And I love watching your reaction to the bistronomy movement in Paris and the episode where you went with Tony and saw a city that seemed almost like you didn't recognize the city you knew better than most. At the moment, you know, it seems that in New York,

the highest and the lowest ends of dining are the most robust. There's LeBernodana's LeBernodana's a beautiful experience. Thank you. We can now get some of the best fried chicken sandwiches in the world at like nine different places. Yes, of course. Is there a middle way? Do you see a future for a middle way?

Have you been inspired or surprised by something? that suggested to you, oh, this woman's figured it out or this group of chefs is to watch, in a way to sort of bring the best of both together to the table for a, for not, maybe not a Friday night dinner, but a Tuesday night dinner.

I think it's easy to define fine dining and the rest is very subjective. What is the middle way? I mean, what is... I guess I don't know either. I'm just curious because, you know, I've been to Le Bernardine for a birthday and an anniversary.

Yes. I can go down to Fuku or to Shake Shack. Sure. So Shakeshack is definitely not fine dining. We know that, but it's well done. That's what I mean. So I love it, and I don't look down on it any way. And then in between Shack and Le Bernardin is an entire universe, right?

Yeah. A lot of space. And I think it's a lot of young chef or restaurateurs who don't have the budget to build a restaurant like Le Bernardin. I mean, today if you were building Le Bernardin, it will cost probably $20 million. It's not even a rational of business model.

Therefore, you have some very talented people who open restaurants who are smaller in scale and they can do some great food and you can feel the warmth of the service. It's a different experience. It's not fine dining for budget reasons. But in New York,

I think we have a lot of small restaurants like that in different areas, in the five boroughs, actually. It seems like one of the most essential things about a restaurant is that it needs to know itself, it needs to have a sense of place and understand what it wants to do as opposed to wanting to do everything.

Yes, absolutely. If you try to do everything, you'll do nothing, I guess. Well, do you have to be loyal to your own taste and soul. And finally, I know you do a lot of, your friendship with Tony is very much

part of the public imagination. At this point, you do television shows with him. He drags your name through the mud on repeated repeatedly. But for as much as, you know, you've even done the tour, which is good and evil, and you play these roles. But, you know, in reading this book and

getting to know you better through the page and watching a Vec Eric, which is your television series on public television. On PBS, then we did one year on Cooking Channel. Oh, that's right, on Cooking Channel. As well, now it's on iTunes. There's a, the thing that the through line through it is the same through line that I would put to Tony show, which is there is just a deep attitude of curiosity at the root of it.

Yes. And it's interesting because I think it's possible to be an acclaimed and accomplished chef and have your brand, so to speak, be expertise. You are an expert in many things, but on these shows, you are passionate with you're passionate and curious. And I feel like that's what draws. cause people in, and I find that very interesting to watch. Well, if you're not passionate, if you're not curious, if you're not humble, because ultimately being curious and passionate means being humble, in that case, you are blind and

deaf, and you don't progress, and you're static, and you get bored, and you die. What's that it? Well, I feel like a very boring answer. That's perfect. We started with your childhood, and we've ended with projecting death. I don't think there's anywhere else to go, except to the bar. Chef, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me, and I do hope you'll consider another book in a few years,

because this is a great one. Thank you so much.