Thomas Keller

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 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.

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 chef. 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 chef positions in Florida and soon became chef of 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.

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 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 earning 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) 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).

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. A bakery with the namesake opened nearby a few years later. 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.

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 Provencal-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.

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

Official Website