She’s the one that really defined the service, the attitude that is The French Laundry. You give people the opportunity to take initiative, to succeed and fail, and you’re surprised what comes out.”Īnd no one has been more important to the success of The French Laundry-or Keller-than Laura Cunningham, Vice President of Branding and Creative Development for the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group. “The teams that have been through this restaurant have been extraordinary. After all, it’s the people that matter most. Living up to the hype created by Caen and others in the following years is something Keller credits to the team around him. It enlightened everyone in the Bay Area about The French Laundry. “Everybody who read the Chronicle read Herb Caen. “I put myself in your hands,” I said compliantly to the chef-owner, Thomas Keller, whereupon the most amazing assortment of dishes emerged from the tiny kitchen with one stove, three aides (Ron Siegel and Kristina and Stephen Dufsel) and two dishwashers. All of a sudden this small (62-seat) restaurant in the gray stone house on the main drag is the toughest culinary ticket in the Bay Area. night, I finally got into The French Laundry in Yountville. The turning point for the restaurant, Keller says, was a write-up in the San Francisco Chronicle from social columnist Herb Caen in 1995: Instead, Keller ushered in a tasting menu in the mid-'90s designed so that no one ingredient appeared more than once. Gone were the days of a simple, 4-course menu (then just $47). “One of the most important things we did was change our menu every day,” says Keller. Don’t ever let anyone tell you can’t do something.” But just as Keller found his way back into the kitchen after the East Coast setback, the next day The French Laundry team returned with the right pans and a new menu. “When I lost Rakel, I was lost for three and a half years. We didn’t own a sauté pan we cooked everything in sauce pots.” It was a night one of Keller’s chefs likened to the sinking of the Titanic.īut Keller-no stranger to challenge-was up for it.
Not that the journey from local to legendary was without its share of snags along the way, starting on night one: “The worst night we ever had was opening night. The Schmitts realized there was a great opportunity.” And it was an opportunity Keller seized upon, too. When Don and Sally started the restaurant, Napa Valley was a bit unknown. “Napa is unique in the way that it attracts visitors who come for the food and wine-and no other purpose than that. “Back then people still struggled to get in,” says Keller. Before Keller took over as chef/proprietor in 1994, Don (then town mayor) and Sally Schmitt opened the doors to The French Laundry-once a French steam laundry-in 1978 as a family-operated spot open four days a week for Napa Valley locals and visitors alike to get a good meal-when they could.
It was chef Jonathan Waxman, then running Table 29 in Napa Valley, who tipped Keller off about the relatively unknown restaurant. But that’s exactly what Yountville’s The French Laundry, which celebrated this landmark birthday back in February, has done, most prominently under the tutelage of chef Thomas Keller. In a day and age when even great restaurants come and go as quickly as you can say “rent hike,” lasting four decades-much less spending the majority of those years atop a throne of accolades and best-of lists, including maintaining three Michelin stars since the San Francisco Guide's launch in 2007-is no piece of cake.
0 kommentar(er)
