YouSaid · the spoken record

Thomas Keller

lines on the record: 111
first: 2023-05-29
most recent: 2023-05-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I put that on the table. I said, This is what I'm doing now. This is how I'm going to fund this Was even more intrigued. He said, okay, he said, if you pay me $5,000, I'll do this on spec. So now I have to raise another $5,000. Came in the form of going to the ATM machines every week and withdrawing as much cash as I could. And then that began the process of drafting all the agreements and the process of me starting to try to raise the money.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“$5,000 a down payment, which I had to scrape together. But in the meantime, before that, before we went into escrow, I had to now find somebody who was going to represent me as an attorney to actually do a business plan. A partnership agreement, the escrow agreements, and the purchase agreements. And I went to see an attorney in Los Angeles whose name was Bob Sutcliffe. I gave him this whole pile of information that was my version of my business plan. And he looked at he was somewhat impressed and he said, okay, for $60,000, I will draft these agreements for you. I said, I don't have any money. It's can you do it on speculation? And I opened up my briefcase, and the only thing that was in my briefcase on that day was a bottle of our extra virgin olive oil that I was producing”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe I was expecting them to say here, take the restaurant, you run it. You know, you're Thomas Keller. You've done all these things before. Then we're happy to sell you the restaurant, but for the time being, you take it. They know I didn't have any money. We went into Escrow on a $1.2 million property for $5,000.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Savings. I didn't have anything in savings. Was living week to week just trying to make my house payment or my car payment or my insurance payments or anything that I needed.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a really remarkable story. I brought with me my whole portfolio of my career, right? All the articles that have been written about me. The idea is that I had, and they embraced them. And they said, great, go raise the money. And we're happy to sell you our restaurant.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they opened in 1978 And of course, I went back up. We had a nice chat. I remember Sally making me a tongue sandwich in her kitchen next door where her house was. And we agreed that I would be the person to buy the restaurant.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly, all of that. But 1992 is when I first discovered it. Know, fell in love with it and actually called the Schmidts. I think when I got back to LA the next week and said, I'd like to come up and meet you and talk to you about buying your restaurant.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I heard about the French laundry before, even when I was in New York City at Raquel, I'd heard about the French laundry. And when I went to Napa, I was dating a woman in Los Angeles who was a wine broker who would have to go to Napa Valley. And we were driving up one day. We drove through Yon Phil, stopped at the French laundry, walked around the property. It was the day they were closed. And I fell in love with it. I said, this is it. This is my destiny. This is my fate. This is what I want to do.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tell me about how you, so you're kind of in this interregnum period where you're doing freelance work as a chef and trying to start an olive oil business. And I guess you hear about a restaurant that is a Napa in Yountville called the French Laundry and that the owners were looking to sell it. Tommy had you first heard about this restaurant.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if anybody recognized me at that point. You know, you do what you have to do. I mean, you solve a vision, you solve a goal, you still have your aspirations, you solve your hopes. I just needed to find a way to achieve that. So standing at the end of the aisle is at Gelsen's, you know, on a Sunday afternoon, it wasn't demeaning for me. The purpose behind it was to sell my olive oil, to sell my olive oil meant that I had money, which meant that I can continue pursuing my dreams, right? I wasn't going to go work for somebody else. I was liberated by the work that I had to do. To a certain extent, which allowed me to think about what I was going to do in the future. Even though I had no future, had no money, and had no prospect of a future.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Wow, I had little pieces of baguettes, right? Offering people a taste of the olive oil as they walk by on their grocery tour.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And trying to make a living, doing whatever I could. Starting an olive oil company called Evo at the time and standing basically at the end of the aisle of like the grocery stores, Gelsin's.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had to be my vision, yes. No question about it. I mean, that was my goal was to own my own restaurant that was successful.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What you knew though, or what was probably becoming clear, was that you couldn't work for somebody else, that you weren't there to realize somebody else's vision, that you had to probably run it. It had to be your vision.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We make mistakes every single day. Sometimes we learn immediately from those mistakes. Sometimes it takes us a little longer. We continue to ask ourselves the same question.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the checker's job was just there and became an easy job, an easy opportunity, but not for long-term career choice to get me a new start.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So how could you really pissed off in yourself for not realizing this over a period of five years? I mean, you just spend five years of your life, of your career, of your partner's life and career and money, and ultimately it failed. It threw me into a place where I was questioning my career choice. I'm a really good cook. I may be a good chef, but I'm not necessarily a good businessman. Anyway, I didn't really have any opportunities that were becoming apparent in New York, so I ran away.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, it was the managing of the restaurant. I mean, there's lots of, there's never one reason that a restaurant or business closes. Yeah. It's a number of different things. So certainly the downturn in 1989, the economic crash, that certainly was part of it. But at the end of the day, it was on my shoulders once again that I didn't understand the structure I needed to operate effectively and profitably. And that was making sure there were people who had skill levels that I didn't have that were part of the team, a general manager, right, who really understood how to run a restaurant. Somebody on the financial side, right? Somebody who's actually understood. The revenue streams, what we were doing, what we were spending.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not at all, it's what I wanted to do. I was all in. I wanted to be one of the best French chefs in America. And I wanted to be successful. Was I sad when Raquel closed? Was I disappointed? Was I crushed? Yes.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pretty much. I mean, you're consumed commitment 100%. And my biggest mistake at the time was I thought I could do everything. And I realized after the failure of Raquel that I needed to have support. I needed to have people around me.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of people don't, I think a lot of people don't realize that the head chef of a restaurant is like the director of a film, right? You're essentially overseeing everything. And there's a lot of moving parts because you're not just cooking in the kitchen. And I have to assume you were cooking in the kitchen every night. You were in the kitchen.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I mean, Raquel was that. I mean, it was New York City, Serge, and I became very close friends, and we named it Raquel after Raoul and Keller, which was going to be a contemporary. A bit elegant, refined in a way, but also have a little bit of the downtown sense of casualness to it.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If I whisper in your ear and say, you know, you really disappointed me, and this is what you need to do better, then I get a better response. But I didn't approach it in the proper way. And so eventually I failed. And that's on my shoulders. That's on my shoulders.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it comes down to your purpose. My purpose as a chef is to give the guests this experience. And in a restaurant, there are many people that are part of the process. From the prep cooks, the Komis, the butcher, everybody that's involved in preparing the food. And then you have all the service staff. So there are a lot of people in between me and my goal. And if something goes wrong or somebody makes a misstep in that process, then that's where I got upset. And I express that in an emotional way, which is not necessarily a positive way. That wasn't going to get me to where I wanted to be. I mean, if I sit there and yell at you because you've done something wrong, you're not going to necessarily understand what you've done wrong because you're feeling insignificant.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I came back from France with a certain arrogance, you know, a certain expectation. And it wasn't always aligned with the owner. And my purpose was to bring back to America these techniques, these compositions, the purpose of the modern French cuisine. And he wasn't of that genre. He wanted to have a very classically run restaurant. And so he butted heads. And I didn't realize that I was threatening his position. He was the owner. And he didn't let me do that for very long until he terminated me.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The most famous dessert of that restaurant at that time, which is one of the most famous restaurants in all of France. And most young stagiaires didn't even get to see the pastry kitchen.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Education, education, education. That's what I was going for. This was my graduate school. And when I finally got to France, I had amassed a certain amount of skill, knowledge, experience that really helped me look beyond and learn beyond just the fundamental things that happened in a French kitchen. What are the nuances, right? What are the details? How do they actually make their stock and why do they make their stock like that? So the refinement of the processes that are executed in a true three-star mission restaurant, I became privy to. I mean, after coming back from lunch every day at Tayavant, I would go upstairs with the pastry chef and make the Marquis of Chocolate.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I got on a train and went to Paris and the rest of his history. And I just started calling people. I had this huge file. Just started asking for help and just sending my resume out and finally getting a job. And once you got your first job and you did a good job, then the chef would help you and refer you to his colleagues. And so, you know, going from one to the next. Just became part of my life through that year plus.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But for me, there was never a fear, right? I just got on the plane and went and ended up in this small kitchen in Arbois, which was really horrible. I mean, I come from the polo lounge. I mean, this is... This was some of the most cutting edge cuisine in America. And I go to this kitchen where, you know, the lights are still on wires hanging down from the ceiling. The floor is always wet. And the room I stayed in, the window was covered with what I didn't know at the time, covered with soot from coal. And my first job in the morning for the only three days I was there was to fire the ovens with the coal. I mean, this was, I was going back in time, you know, 100 years. And I'm going, why am I here? I just came from the polo. And within three days, you know, I snuck out the back door.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You would end up spending about a year, a little over a year there, I think, in working in different restaurants. And what was it like? I mean, you would work for some of these incredible kitchens, Michelin three-star kitchens. I mean, and presumably you were the only American in a lot of these kitchens with limited French, was it, I mean, it sounds like that wouldn't be easy.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly on Prince Street, which was, you know, before Soho was Soho. Serge had opened Raoul with his brother Gi and Gi was the chef, and Serge ran the restaurant. And to be able to get a job at Raoul's, which is a very, very busy restaurant, French bistro, classic French dishes was something that was very exciting for me. And I jumped at that opportunity. I'm going to go be the Chef at Raoul's. Unfortunately, Guy left fairly quickly, so there was no transition, right? I didn't have the opportunity to learn to be mentored by a previous chef. Really impacted me, and I made sure going forward that that wasn't going to happen had I ever opened my own restaurant, this idea of transition became really important for me because that was the biggest failure for me at Raul's.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you spent three summers at Leriv, and eventually you found your way to New York City, which was definitely the place to be for a young up-and-coming chef in the early 80s. And you worked in a bunch of different kitchens, or won't be able to talk about all of them, but you cooked at the polo lounge, which was kind of a proving ground, right, for elite chefs at the time. And you also had a restaurateur in New York named Serge Roul. And I guess he would become a really important partner, and eventually he would hire you to be the chef at a restaurant downtown called Raoul's, right?”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“their life by not taking care of the products that we have in our restaurants, whether it's a live animal, or whether it's products that are grown or produced for us. And so this high level of respect for food really enveloped me”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it was one of the most blood curdling sounds. It was so loud that Renee and Paulette came out of their house, which was probably 100 yards away, to see if there's something happened to me. And of course, you know, I was traumatized and now I had to really take mercy on this poor rabbit and, you know, and kill it and got through that first one. And it took me a while to get through the next one, the next 10. But I did it. And what it did for me, yes, I mean, it was brutal, you know, but it's understanding that these animals had, you know, sacrificed their lives to nurture us and the sense of respect that I garnered from that was immediate and complete to the point where I'm thinking, you know, if I'm burning a piece of bread, there was a farmer who planted the weed, harvested the weed, there was somebody who milled the wheat, there was somebody who made the bread. It's like I'm diminishing their”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, of course, now I'm looking at this, and I need to kill 11 rabbits because I need these for my menu this weekend. Reached inside the cage and I made the fatal mistake of not having securely embraced both of the legs in my hand. And by not doing that, the rabbit immediately responded by trying to jump, right? That's what rabbits do, their hind legs are the strongest part of the animal, the strongest muscle. And what happens now, because I'm holding one leg and this other leg is loose and his reflexes will jump, it snaps the leg I'm holding. And the rabbits screamed.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I had a butcher, actually we had a farmer. Raised rabbits, and every week I bought 12 rabbits from him. Of course, they would come butchered, right, and dressed, and I asked him one day, I said, would you mind bringing the rabbits living and show me how to slaughter a rabbit? I thought I was a chef. These were things I should understand, right? The slaughtering of an animal, even though it's a very small animal. And he said, okay, he brought 12 rabbits the next week in a cage, and he reached inside. He said, the most important part of this process is make sure that you grab both of their hind legs at the same time, right? You want to make sure that you get that security in your hand. Then he picked it up, cracked its skull. Took his knife out and gutted it and skinned it.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had a small garden. Was it a time where we smoked our own salmon? I mean, all this different things that were part of this burgeoning culinary culture in America that was happening everywhere around our country. I was embracing the opportunity at La Riv and trying to execute it at that high level. I mean, the rabbit story comes from Laree. That was a very important moment in my life, right? Killing 12 rabbits.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And so you had to be really organized. I mean, the organization was key. Establishing efficiency in the menu was key. It was really exciting. I mean, trying to develop menus that allowed you as the single culinarian in the kitchen to prepare for anywhere from 30 guests to 100 guests over a period of three or three and a half hours. I was on the baseball field. I mean, this was, you know, we played a baseball game every night. We played the World Series every Saturday. Then you start to extend yourself and express yourself in different ways, whether that through a new technique on dessert that you read from Jacques Pepin's La Technique cookbook.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, called LaReeve. So, right, I went to work for another French chef who just opened his restaurant in Lake Park, Florida, which is just north of West Palm Beach. And he introduced me to his friend who owned a restaurant in Catskill, New York. Was on the side of a small mountain next to a flowing river in the name of the restaurant was La Riv. And so Renee and Paulette, Ren ⁇ was the husband Paulette, of course, brought me to La Reeve. And it was just a wonderful experience for me working with Renee and Paulette and Mimi, who was Paulette's mother. I was the only person in the kitchen except for a helper and a dishwasher. And Paulette's mother who would shuck my Harry Covet or peel my shallots for me while she was watching Wheel of Fortune upstairs, which is where they lived.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a line in a book called The Soul of a Chef by Michael Roman. He writes in his book that after the failure of that restaurant, you can imagine the movie scene with the tracking shot and the music. And it says, Keller returned to his itinerant life As an itinerant, sort of a traveling chef. And you did this for. A number of years into the early eighties and eventually I guess ended up in upstate New York at a seasonal restaurant, French restaurant.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had a carpentry shop, one of them was a flight attendant. And they always had this dream of opening a restaurant. And of course, everybody thinks opening restaurants easy. You get the right chef, right? You get the right location. You serve the right food, charge the right price, and you're going to be successful. And we relatively quickly, I think within a year, we closed the restaurant. And it was heartbreak because they, the two young men who opened it and financed it, they were relying on me as their chef to produce a menu, one that they would put us on the map. And that just didn't happen.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I mean, primarily, none of us had the experience of running a restaurant. The two gentlemen who actually owned it and opened the restaurant and funded it were not from the hospitality profession, not from the restaurant profession whatsoever.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was a French chef. He was somebody I admired. And so I followed his path. I wanted to be like Roland Hennon at the end of the day. I wanted to be like him. And he suggested that I go to France and do an internship in the great restaurants in France.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His name was Henon, yes, Hen Roland, who was a very intense chef, somewhat intimidating, extremely powerful, it was a chef that you actually felt his presence before he walked into the kitchen. I mean, you just knew he was in the building for some reason. And he came to me one day and he asked me, he said, you know, Thomas, do you know why cooks cook? And I'm trying to answer the question. I don't really know how to answer the question. And he answered it for me. He said, cooks, cook to nurture people. At that moment, I realized in my heart that I was a nurturer, that this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to nurture people. And though there's no better way to nurture people than becoming a chef. Yeah.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I guess the next summer, summer of 77, was really kind of the beginning of your transformation into becoming eventually a chef, because there was a restaurant in Rhode Island called the Dunes Club, and they had a chef there from Lyon, the capital, the food capital of the world, right? I mean, Lyon, France. And this is a guy who you just kind of idolized. Yeah, he became like a mentor. His name was Roland Enon.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I found that same kind of environment, that same kind of teamwork, that same kind of focus that are required in a baseball team in a kitchen.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you have six individuals on the line, all of them with different disciplines, right? You had your saucier, your poisoner, your entremetier, but focused on one goal was to get to the chef what he needed when he needed it so he can give it to the guest. Right. And that really kind of started to for me mold this idea of running a sports franchise. One of the things that I had hoped to do at a young age, and that's in my early teens, late tweens, was to play baseball.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the way that we did things there for me was very exciting. You know, I mean, to get a leg or a veal, seam it out, and make scalopenia out of it, you know, over a period of the entire day, right? That's how long it took to do that, was fascinating.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I guess eventually you started leaving Florida in the summers to work in kitchens up north, and I guess you spent a few summers in Rhode Island. And I read that your first job up there, this was like 1976 at a restaurant called the Clark Cook Cook House, is that right?”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was interesting because I always describe it there are two people I called every night putting my orders in. I called the bakery to order the bread for the next day. And then I called Cheney Brothers, which was our local supplier and purveyor for everything else and mops to chemicals to silverware to the steaks or fish or the vegetables.”
2023-05-29 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT