Chef and Restaurateur: Thomas Keller

Thomas Keller is one of the best—and best known—chefs in America, but it took him 40 years to get there. He took a long, winding path through the culinary arts; from whisking his first hollandaise sauce at the Palm Beach Yacht Club, to learning the painstaking art of pastry at one of the finest restaurants in France. He also worked in some of America’s most demanding kitchens, and failed at two of his own restaurants before purchasing The French Laundry in Napa Valley—a place he would transform into an international destination. Thomas has grown his business to include 10 restaurants and bakeries, and is one of the few chefs to hold three Michelin stars in two restaurants. He has also mentored countless younger chefs, passing along a lesson that was once taught to him: cooking is nurturing. This episode was produced by Alex Cheng, with music by Ramtin Arablouei Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Alex Cheng. You can follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2 a.m. kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan,

• 0:46Guy Raz?

  build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.

• 1:32Guy Raz?

  Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems. But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands, on the table in rewards you never earned, money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card. Now, you're earning 3% cash back

• 2:16Guy Raz?

  on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer. For the first time ever,

• 3:00Guy Raz?

  new Delta SkyMiles Reserve American Express Card members can earn two Delta Comfort Round Trip flights for travel within the 48 contiguous US states, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands. Plus, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles towards your next getaway. And who doesn't appreciate an elevated airport experience? Delta SkyMiles Reserve Card members get access to the Delta Sky Club, your pre-flight oasis to recharge, with 15 visits and four one-time guest passes each medallion year when flying Delta together. That's up to $950 in annual value. Value estimate based on $50 per visit rate to purchase additional visits

• 3:45Guy Raz?

  or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the car that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Maine to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show, because the best

• 4:27Guy Raz?

  ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way great founders engineer their products. Mobile Supreme Plus Premium Gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to mobile, regular gas in port fuel-injected engines. Actual results may vary. Visit mobilefuels.com for details.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  With a Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One, you earn unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase, and you get big purchasing power, so your business can spend more and earn more.

• 5:24Guy Raz?

  How I Built This is pleased to have Upwork as our presenting sponsor. Visit upwork.com to get hiring. Upwork has a message for you. Everything you know about business, it was made up by a bunch of guys 100 years ago. Don't stay bound to their antiquated rules like the 9-to-5 workday, commuting to an empty office building, or only hiring full-timers. Embrace a new way of working with Upwork. It's a portal to the future of business, and it's disguised as a website. Go to upwork.com. There you'll see the light and also find talent for projects of any size, from simple deliverables to complex projects, from short-term help to full-time hires. You can finally let those old business titans and their tired ideas rest in peace. This is how we work now.

• 6:08Guy Raz?

  Visit upwork.com to get hiring talented professionals today.

• 6:13Guy Raz?

  Does your team want a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting, and a CMS built in, so the work is production-ready from day one. And you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. AI agents and humans work together. The agents bring speed and scale, and people bring taste,

• 6:58Guy Raz?

  judgment, and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply.

• 7:21Guy Raz?

  You know, we talk a lot on this show about hustle. And recently, I spoke to actor Andy Garcia, who shared some amazing stories about starting out in Hollywood, where he worked on a loading dock with another newcomer, Bryan Cranston. Andy was also a catering waiter at the Beverly Hilton, serving dinner to stars like Jane Fonda. But just a few years later, he was literally making dinner and talking about the Corleone family with Francis Ford Coppola. Check out my conversation with Andy Garcia on my other podcast, The Great Creators. Just search for The Great Creators with Guy Raz wherever you listen to podcasts. And now, on to today's show.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  I'm not sure if you've ever called people that you don't know and asked them for money?

• 8:12Guy Raz?

  Uh, yes. Yes, I have.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a really difficult thing.

• 8:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  I drafted a 10-page brief to share with two individuals that I thought would be a good benchmark for investment. I turned to Michael. I said, "Michael, what do you think?" And he said, "It's a horrible idea. It's never going to work. It's too expensive. People in Napa Valley don't want that kind of restaurant. Forget about it." I was crushed. I was just crushed. I was like, "Shit, what am I going to do?" I turned to Bob, and Bob said, "Great idea. Let's do it."

• 8:45Speaker 02

  That's all I needed.

• 8:54Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 9:05Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Thomas Keller's love of food and obsession with detail helped him build a business that includes two of the best restaurants in the world, Per Se and The French Laundry.

• 9:27Guy Raz?

  How do you become the best at something? Practice, of course, and commitment and, well, time. It takes time. And hopefully, on that journey to mastering your craft, you've dealt with some setbacks, which almost always makes you better. All of these things and more are part of Thomas Keller's story. When it comes to living chefs in America, Thomas Keller is widely acknowledged to be the best. In the world of food, earning a Michelin star is like winning an Oscar. Very difficult and very rare. Earning three Michelin stars is almost impossible. Only around 140 restaurants in the world hold that distinction.

• 10:11Guy Raz?

  Thomas Keller has three Michelin stars at two different restaurants. The French Laundry in Napa Valley and Per Se in New York. And just to add to that list, he also has a one-star restaurant in Miami. That makes him the most decorated American chef of all time. But perhaps more importantly, he's also mentored many of the best chefs working in the US and abroad. People like Grant Apkeids of Alenia in Chicago and Rene Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen. In total, Thomas Keller oversees 10 restaurants and bakeries. He's authored half a dozen cookbooks, and he's created his own brands of olive oil, chocolate, and gluten-free flour.

• 10:55Guy Raz?

  It's a big business, easily worth over $100 million. But even though his recipes and his restaurants have set the tone for many who have followed, Thomas Keller was somewhat of a late bloomer. He didn't have his first big success with The French Laundry until he was 40 years old, and at the time, he was nearly broke. Before that, as you will hear, he worked in so many kitchens and in so many places that we won't even have time to mention them all. But in each of those stops, Thomas was learning how to be better, observing other chefs practicing the same steps over and over, even forcing himself on one occasion to learn exactly where

• 11:37Guy Raz?

  his food was coming from by slaughtering 12 rabbits, pretty much with his bare hands. And along the way, he also had a long string of false starts and all-out failures. He knew he could cook, but at times, he wondered if he had it in him to be a restaurateur, a businessman. But over time, he learned from his failures, his temper, his poor relationships with management, challenges in building the right team, and he really believed, deep down, that cooking, nurturing, was his true calling. Thomas Keller was born at Camp Pendleton in Southern California. His dad was in the Marine Corps, and a few years after his birth, his parents split up.

• 12:20Guy Raz?

  Thomas ended up living with his mom, who managed restaurants. And by the late 1960s, when he was in high school, the family had landed in Palm Beach in South Florida. And there, Thomas's mother put him and his older brother, Joseph, to work in the kitchen that she managed at Palm Beach Yacht Club.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  So I washed dishes. I was the dishwasher and Joseph was a prep cook or a line cook. And that's where we really kind of began that process of truly understanding what a restaurant was like. I mean, Joseph and I were of a specific age where we can actually work in the restaurant.

• 12:54Guy Raz?

  All right. So tell me a little bit about, I mean, I guess your mom, if she's running a restaurant, she was probably gone all the time. But what was your home life like? Did you kind of have to sort of raise yourselves in a sense?

• 13:08Speaker 02

  More or less. I mean, you know, there wasn't, and that's why people ask me all the time, so what was your food culture like at home? I mean, did your mother cook a lot? Did you have these experiences like where you're, you know, sitting on your grandmother's knees, stirring the blanquette?

• 13:21Guy Raz?

  The bolognese.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, whatever. It's like, no. You know, my childhood was primarily, you know, I ate whatever my older brothers, right? Or whatever we could produce for ourselves. And primarily at that time, you had Swanson's TV dinners was always, you know, like a night out. And then, you know, whatever came, hamburger helper, or, you know, those kinds of things, which were fairly easy to do. But at the same time, you know, after school or during our homework, we would go to the restaurant. So many nights, we would just eat at the restaurant.

• 13:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah. But you were not, I mean, you were not sort of dreaming of being a chef. In fact, I think, I guess you didn't really know what you wanted to do, right? I mean, I've heard you describe yourself as a pretty mediocre student, for example, in high school.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Exactly. But my mother had great expectations, and certainly she was very focused on detail, work ethic. And so, so even as a dishwasher, I mean, my job was to make sure that my job was done at the level that she would have proved. Whether it was cleaning the restrooms in the morning, or whether it was taking out the garbage at the end of the night and sweeping up. And that was, you know, always based on what my mother's expectations were. And still today, you know, I ask myself, you know, would my mother approve of this?

• 14:39Guy Raz?

  The restaurant where she she managed was called the Palm Beach Yacht Club, I believe.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:45Guy Raz?

  And I guess there was a point when you were like 21 or something, when she needed a chef because she couldn't find one and kind of pressed you into doing this job with very little experience. Can you help me understand, like, was this like a fancy restaurant? Was it just like burgers and fries? What was like a, yeah, what was it?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Palm Beach Yacht Club was a small, private club and basically catered to local businessmen for lunch. And lunch consisted of, you know, for the most part, hamburgers, flank steak with au jus, omelets, right, eggs benedict. So it wasn't really a struggle for me to understand how to prepare those dishes. And then I had my brother Joseph, who really was my second mentor after my mother, who helped me, helped me learn, taught me how to make a hollandaise sauce. And so that was really my first understanding of cooking. I mean, it's cooking a steak or doing an omelet. Those things were fairly easy, but the actual intricacy of making a hollandaise sauce was a little more detailed, a little more, was a little more intense.

• 15:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Like today, I'm imagining a restaurant like that, 90% of its stuff would just come from the Cisco truck, right? It would just back in and there'd be stuff that would just be unloaded and, you know, maybe the fries would be frozen and the burgers would be pre-made. And was it like that already in the mid 70s?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Well, 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 Chaney Brothers, which was our local supplier and purveyor, for everything else, right? From brooms and mops to chemicals, to silverware, to the steaks or the fish or the vegetables.

• 16:31Guy Raz?

  Here's your, here's your chlorine bleach and here's your fish.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  Right, right. So everything came on, as you point out, everything came on one truck. I mean, that was it.

• 16:40Guy Raz?

  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 was, this is like 1976, at a restaurant called The Clark Cook, Clark Cook House, is that right?

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Yep. 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 scallopini out of it, you know, over a period of the entire day, right? That's how long it took to do that was fascinating.

• 17:12Guy Raz?

  You were on a line, you had a station, like you would get one job to do.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah. You have six individuals on the line, all of them with different disciplines, right? You had your saussette, your poissonier, your entremetier, but focused on one goal, right? Was to get to the chef, what he needed, when he needed it, so he can give it to the guest.

• 17:32Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  And that really kind of started to, for me, mold this idea of running a sports franchise. You know, 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.

• 17:46Guy Raz?

  Like, play professionally?

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, you're 12 years old, you're 11 years old.

• 17:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah, sure.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Your dream is to be, you know, Willie Mays or something like that. And I found that, 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.

• 18:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah. 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...

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Idolized.

• 18:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah, idolized. Yeah, he became like a mentor. His name was Roland Henan?

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Henan, yes, Henan.

• 18:30Guy Raz?

  Henan.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. 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 there's no better way to nurture people than becoming a chef.

• 19:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  He was a French chef. He was somebody I admired. And so I followed his path. I wanted to be like Roland Henin. 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.

• 19:32Guy Raz?

  But you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't do that for a few, another few years, I think.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Exactly. But it was my focus. I wanted to go to France from the beginning. It took me three years to get there.

• 19:43Guy Raz?

  Okay, got it. But in the meantime, you, you went back to Florida. And you actually helped two investors open a restaurant as the head chef. I think this is your first head chef job. But I think that enterprise failed pretty quickly, like, like maybe even within a year, right?

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, I mean, primarily, none of us had the experience of running a restaurant. The, 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.

• 20:13Guy Raz?

  They're like a carpentry shop, right?

• 20:15Speaker 02

  One of them had a carpentry shop. One of them was a flight attendant.

• 20:18Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  And, you know, they always had this dream of opening a restaurant. And of course, you know, everybody thinks opening a restaurant is 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.

• 20:30Guy Raz?

  Done.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  And we relatively quickly, I think within a year, you know, we closed the restaurant. And it was heartbreaking because they, they, the two young men who opened it and financed it, you know, they were relying on me as their chef, right, to produce a menu, one that they, that they would put us on the map. And that just didn't happen.

• 20:51Guy Raz?

  There's a line in a book called The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman. He writes in his book that after the failure of that restaurant, you can imagine like the movie scene with like the tracking shot and the music. And it says Keller returned to his itinerant life, you know, as a itinerant, sort of a traveling chef, right? And you did this for a number of years into the early eighties. And you eventually, I guess, ended up in upstate New York at a seasonal restaurant, a French restaurant.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, called La Rive. So, right, I went to work for another French chef who just opened his restaurant in Lake Park, Florida, which is, you know, just north of West Palm Beach. And he introduced me to his friend, who owned a restaurant in Catskill, New York. It was on the side of a small mountain next to a flowing river. And the name of the restaurant was La Rive. And so Rene and Paulette, Rene was the husband, Paulette, of course, brought me to La Rive. And it was just a wonderful experience for me, working with Rene 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 hairy couvert

• 22:04Speaker 02

  or peel my shallots for me, you know, while she was watching Wheel of Fortune upstairs, which is where they lived.

• 22:09Guy Raz?

  So you did all the cooking? So you had one prep person to cook for like 50 to 100 meals a night?

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Exactly. And so you had to be really organized, right? 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 culinary in the kitchen, to prepare for anywhere from 30 guests to 100 guests over a period of three or three and a half hours. It was, 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.

• 22:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  And then you started to extend yourself and express yourself in different ways, whether that through a new technique on dessert that you read from Jacques Papin's La Technique Cookbook. Or we had a small garden. Was it a time where we smoked our own salmon? I mean, all of this different things that were part of this burgeoning culinary culture in America. That was happening everywhere around our country, right? I was embracing the opportunity at La Reeve and trying to execute at that high level. Yeah. I mean, the rabbit story, the rabbit story comes from La Reeve. That was a very important moment in my life, right? Killing 12 rabbits. What, tell me the story. So I had a butcher. We had a, actually, we had a farmer that raised rabbits. And every week I bought 12 rabbits from him.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  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 are 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. And 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, you get that secured in your hand. And then he picked it up, cracked its skull. Oh. And took his knife out and then gutted it and skinned it. And that was it. And he said, there you go.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  And he left. I'm like, okay, shit, what am I going to do with this? 12 rabbits? So of course, now I'm looking at this, I need to kill 11 rabbits because I need these for my menu this weekend. And I reached inside the cage and I made the fatal mistake of not having securely, you know, 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. It's the strongest muscle. And what happens now, because I'm holding one leg and his other leg is loose and his reflexes to jump, it snaps the leg I'm holding. And the rabbits screamed.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  I mean, it was just, it was, 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 that happened to me. And of course, you know, I was, 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 sacrificed their lives to nurture us.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  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 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.

• 26:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah. All right. So you, you spent three summers at, at LaRive 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 eighties. And you worked in a, in a bunch of different kitchens there. I won't be able to talk about all of them, but you cooked at, at the Polo Lounge, which was, which was kind of a proving ground, right, for elite chefs at the time. And then, and you also met a restaurateur in New York named Serge Roule. And I guess he would become a really important partner and eventually he would hire you to be, to be the chef at a restaurant in downtown called Raoul's, right?

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Exactly. On Prince Street, which was, you know, before Soho was Soho, Serge had opened Raoul with his brother Guy, and Guy 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.

• 27:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  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.

• 27:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Which 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 Raoul's.

• 27:41Guy Raz?

  Meantime, you were still thinking or plotting how to get to France, right? Like, you were still-

• 27:46Speaker 02

  All the time.

• 27:47Guy Raz?

  You were in New York, but you were still trying to figure out, how do I get to France to do a stage, like an apprenticeship?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Right. That would be my college. That was my education. That was my finishing. That was my MBA.

• 27:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You would end up spending about a year, a little over a year there, I think, and working in different restaurants.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:03Guy Raz?

  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.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  No, but, you know, for me, it was, 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, 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, on like, on wires hanging, 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, 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.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  I mean, this was, I was going back in time, you know, 100 years. And I went, why am I here? I just came from the Polo. And within three days, you know, I snuck out the back door and I got on a train and went to Paris.

• 29:14Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  And, and the rest was history. And I just started calling people. I had this huge file. And I 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.

• 29:36Guy Raz?

  Thomas, what were you, what in your mind were you chasing, right? As a, you're now getting close to 30 and obviously you're working towards something. And was it to be-

• 29:50Guy Raz?

  Presumably to eventually come back and start your own restaurant with your own vision, but was it also to like, learn how to become the best chef ever? I mean, I don't know.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Education, education, education. That's, that's what I was going for. This was my graduate school. And when I finally got to France, I had amassed, you know, a certain amount of skill, knowledge, experience that really helped me look beyond and learn beyond just the fundamental things that happen in a French kitchen.

• 30:18Guy Raz?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Right? 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, in a true three-star mission restaurant, I became privy to. I mean, I would, you know, after coming back from lunch every day at Talion, you know, I would go upstairs with the pastry chef and make the marqueau chocolat. The most famous dessert of that restaurant at that time, which was one of the most famous restaurants in all of France. And most young stagiers didn't even get to see the pastry kitchen.

• 30:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You know, I mean, you come back to New York, you're 30, almost 30, around 30. And obviously with all of these skills now under your belt. And, and I have to assume you came back to New York with the goal of finding a partner to open a restaurant. And you would, it would take you about two years. But in the meantime, you went to work as the chef de cuisine at a restaurant called La Reserve. It was a high-end French restaurant. And you were, you were eventually fired. You didn't see eye to eye with the owner. What, what happened there?

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Well, 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, of that genre. He wanted to have a very classically run restaurant. And so we 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.

• 32:10Guy Raz?

  Hmm. You at the time had a reputation for being a yeller in the kitchen.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Emotional.

• 32:18Guy Raz?

  Emotional. Yeah, and that's not uncommon, right? I mean, there's, obviously, there's the sort of caricature of the chef throwing pans at people's heads and stuff, and Marco Pierre-Wine and all these sort of stories.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Sure. It was our culture.

• 32:31Guy Raz?

  Right. You don't have that reputation today, of course, but tell me about where that come from? Was it, was it the pressure to, to be the best? Was it expectations? Was it, I don't know. I mean, because ultimately, if your kitchen isn't working well, it's, it's your failure as the leader of the kitchen, right?

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Yep. Hundred percent. So it comes down to your purpose, right? My purpose as a chef is to give the guests this experience.

• 33:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  And in a restaurant, there are many people that are part of the process, from the prep cooks, the comies, 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.

• 33:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  And if, if something goes wrong, or somebody makes a misstep in that process, then that's where I got upset. And I expressed that, you know, 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 feel, you're feeling insignificant.

• 33:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  If I whisper in your ear and say, you know, you really disappointed me, and this is what you need to do, to do better, then I get a better response. So.

• 33:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  But I didn't approach it in the proper way. And so eventually, I failed. And that's on my shoulders.

• 33:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  That's on my shoulders.

• 33:56Guy Raz?

  One of the, one of your, I mean, you finally had the chance to, once again, open your own restaurant. You did, you had done it in Florida in your twenties, but that doesn't really count. I mean, this was different. This was going to be a joint venture, a restaurant that you were going to be a co-owner of, and it was Raquel, that you were going to do with Serge Roule, who, whose restaurant you had worked in a few years earlier. And he was going to finance this restaurant, the two of you were going to work together and open it up. And it, it became successful. I mean, it became a, quite a, a well-reviewed, well-regarded restaurant.

• 34:30Guy Raz?

  And this was kind of, I guess, your dream, right? I mean, you finally had this opportunity to build the restaurant that you wanted to work in.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  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 Raul and Keller, which was going to be a contemporary American, American-French restaurant.

• 34:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  A bit elegant, refined in a way, but also have a little bit of the downtown sense of casualness to it.

• 34:59Guy Raz?

  Like, a lot of people don't, I think a lot of people don't realize is that the head chef of a restaurant is like, you're 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 that kitchen. But you're also like, once service ends, you're preparing for the next day. Like, you're not going home until 1, 2 in the morning.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Pretty much. I mean, it was, it was, 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.

• 35:41Guy Raz?

  Well, you're, yeah, you've jumped ahead a little bit, but yeah, Raquel didn't last. But before we get to why, I'm just, I'm curious about the lifestyle, right? Because you're still young at this point. You're in your early 30s, but still, it's grueling. Like, I read an account at the time that it was like Keller works six days a week, 12 to 14 hour days. And then there's one day off. He sort of gets some barbecue, picks up some smoked salmon, watches a baseball game, and then collapses by 9.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:10Guy Raz?

  Did you ever get like, I don't know, depressed or sad? Or did you ever have moments where you're like, I can't, I want to get off this hamster wheel?

• 36:18Speaker 02

  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.

• 36:33Guy Raz?

  Why did it close? What, what happened? I mean, it got great reviews in the New York Times. I mean, of course, there was a financial downturn in the, in the late eighties, early nineties, but that can't be the only reason why. There must have been some failure in the execution or the managing of the restaurant, too.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  No, it was the managing of the restaurant. I mean, there's lots of, there's never one reason that a restaurant or business closes.

• 36:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  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 in, on the financial side, right? Somebody who actually understood the revenue streams, what we were doing, what we were spending.

• 37:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  So, so how could you have been really pissed off in yourself for not realizing this over a period of five years? I mean, you just spent five years of your life, of your career, of your partner's life and career and money, and ultimately failed. It threw me into a place where I was questioning my, my career choice. This is, can I, I'm a really good cook, right? I may be a good chef, but I'm not necessarily a good businessman.

• 37:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  Anyway, I, I didn't really have any, any opportunities that were becoming apparent in New York, so I ran away.

• 38:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you moved to Los Angeles and get a job as a chef, which makes sense because you got to pay the bills. And the, the restaurant, the hotel, I remember this hotel, I mean, the hotel is still there. I think it's a Hilton now, but because I grew up in LA and it was a really cool hotel called Checkers Hotel.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 38:21Guy Raz?

  And so tell me about what your charge was at that time.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  So the Checkers job was just there and became an easy job, an easy opportunity, but not, you know, for long-term career choice.

• 38:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  To get me a new start.

• 38:34Guy Raz?

  You ended up, I think, staying there for about a year and you had a conflict again with the new owners.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 38:40Guy Raz?

  And they... They fired you.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 38:44Guy Raz?

  I want to ask you a question, not to pile on here.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  That's OK.

• 38:48Guy Raz?

  It's a question that I certainly have asked myself at times when I felt like I screwed up. I mean, was there ever a point where you thought, you know, maybe it's me that's the problem? Maybe I'm the problem?

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Of course. In all honesty, there's still today where I ask myself that question. 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.

• 39:16Guy Raz?

  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.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  It had to be my vision, yes. No question about it. I mean, that was, you know, my goal was to own my own restaurant that was successful.

• 39:36Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, Thomas struggles for nearly a year and a half to pull together the money to buy the French Laundry, the restaurant that would change everything for him. Stay with us. You're listening to How I Built This.

• 39:57Guy Raz?

  AI isn't just opening new business opportunities. It's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on. NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together. And that shift is already underway.

• 40:40Guy Raz?

  That's why NetSuite wants to put a new, expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper from it. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI Is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built.

• 41:22Speaker 03

  They're running a Cover 2 defense. But you're running to get game day deals on Uber Eats. Keep everyone at tonight's watch party fed with deals from your go-to restaurants. Or stock up with deals on your favorite snacks and groceries. Whatever the occasion, get game day deals on Uber Eats all season long. It's not football without food. Uber Eats. Order now. Terms apply. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

• 41:53Guy Raz?

  One more thing before we get back to the show. Please make sure to click the Follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And it's totally free.

• 42:11Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 1992, and Thomas Keller is living in LA, between jobs and kind of at loose ends.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  You know, 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, Gelson's.

• 42:36Guy Raz?

  You were literally the guy there at the table, like pouring olive oil for people?

• 42:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, little pieces of baguettes, right? And, you know, offering people a taste of the olive oil as they, as they walked by on their grocery tour.

• 42:48Guy Raz?

  But you were like two years before that on the Food and Wine's 10 Best Young Chefs in America. And did people, anybody ever be like, wait, aren't you Thomas Keller?

• 42:56Speaker 02

  I don't know if anybody recognized me at that point.

• 42:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  You know, you do what you have to do. I mean, you still have a, you still have a vision, you still have a goal, you still have your aspirations, you still have your hopes. I just needed to find a way to achieve that. So standing, you know, at the end of the aisles at Gelson'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.

• 43:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Which meant that I can continue pursuing my dreams, right? I wasn't gonna go work for somebody else. I was, I was liberated by the work that I had to do to a certain extent, which allowed me to think about what I was gonna do in the future. Even though I had no future, had no money, and had no prospect of a future.

• 43:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Tell me about how you, so you're, 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 in Napa, in Yountville, called The French Laundry, and that the owners were looking to sell it. Tell me how you first heard about this restaurant.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  So I'd heard about The French Laundry, you know, before, even when I was in New York City, I recall I had 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 I was, we were driving up one day and we drove through Yountville, stopped at The French Laundry, walked around the property. It was the day they were, 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.

• 44:31Guy Raz?

  Right there? Right then and there?

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Right then and there.

• 44:34Guy Raz?

  Right then and there.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 44:36Guy Raz?

  And it was not a fine dining restaurant. It was a very good restaurant, but it was like a local seasonal cooking.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  If I could say, it was very, very similar to what Alice was doing at Chez Panis.

• 44:45Guy Raz?

  At Chez Panis, okay.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Right. It was one menu a day.

• 44:48Guy Raz?

  Farm to table.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. All of that. But 1992 is when I first discovered it. And, you know, fell in love with it and actually called The Schmitz, 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.

• 45:06Guy Raz?

  And the Schmitz were Don and Sally Schmidt, the owners who had run this restaurant for like 12 years at that point.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, they opened in 1978.

• 45:13Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  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.

• 45:26Guy Raz?

  Wait, stop. How did you, did they, was it just that there weren't many people, like, it was for sale, there just weren't that many people interested? I mean, they agreed with you that then and there that they would sell it to you?

• 45:37Speaker 02

  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 ideas that I had, and they embraced them. And they said, great, go raise the money, and we're happy to sell you our restaurant.

• 45:54Guy Raz?

  How much did you have to raise?

• 45:55Speaker 02

  We had to raise 1.2 million dollars.

• 45:57Guy Raz?

  That was their price?

• 45:59Speaker 02

  That was their price.

• 46:00Guy Raz?

  And how much did you have in savings?

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Savings? I didn't have anything in savings.

• 46:04Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  I 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.

• 46:11Guy Raz?

  So when they said 1.2 million, you didn't flinch at that? You didn't think, how am I gonna do this?

• 46:17Speaker 02

  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 dollar property for $5,000.

• 46:35Guy Raz?

  You gave them $5,000 as a down payment?

• 46:38Speaker 02

  $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, to actually do a business plan.

• 46:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  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. You know, I gave him like this whole pile of information that was my version of my business plan. And he looked at it, he was somewhat impressed. And he said, okay, for $60,000, I will draft these agreements for you.

• 47:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  And I said, I don't have any money. 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. So I put that on the table. I said, this is what I'm doing now. This is how I'm going to fund this. And he 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.

• 47:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Which 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.

• 48:02Guy Raz?

  I think it took you almost two years to raise the money.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, 18 months.

• 48:08Guy Raz?

  And during that time, there was no possibility that some other buyer would swoop in and just offer them cash and that's it? That'd be the end of it?

• 48:16Speaker 02

  I was terrified. Every single day I woke up with that idea in my mind that somebody else with more credibility, with more experience, somebody who was better than I was, was going to just reach out to the Schmitz and buy the restaurant. I woke up every single morning with that on my mind for 18 months. And I had to continue over the period of time to convince Don and Sally that I was the guy.

• 48:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  That I was actually going to make this happen.

• 48:47Guy Raz?

  And how did you do that?

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Well, we built a strong bond, a strong relationship through just communication.

• 48:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  They believed in me and they're counting on Thomas Keller to actually do this. A guy who has certainly a checkered past in his ability to operate restaurants.

• 49:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  The failures that he's had. But yet they believe that I can do it. And that also motivated me to great ends to do everything I could possibly do to execute this, not just for myself, but for them.

• 49:21Guy Raz?

  Did you have a hard time convincing investors to back the project? I mean,

• 49:27Guy Raz?

  Because 18 months is a long time. I mean, of course, not that long in the grand scheme of things, but still like it is restaurants are inherently risky. And, you know, what was the, the response you got from people when you called them up with your cup out asking for cash?

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not sure if you ever called people that you don't know and asked them for money?

• 49:45Guy Raz?

  Uh, yes, yes, I have.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a really difficult thing.

• 49:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  But in many ways, it's also, it's also very exciting, right? To convince somebody who you do not know that the project that you're embarking on has, has merit and so much so that they're going to write you a check.

• 50:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  But I drafted a 10-page brief to share with two individuals that I thought would be a good benchmark for investment. These two gentlemen both owned wineries, both came from financial background. And I gave each one of them a copy of this brief, right? Would explain the French Laundry, my vision, how much it was going to cost. The next day they came down, I turned to Michael, I said, Michael, what do you think? And he said, it's a horrible idea. It's never going to work. It's too expensive. People in Napa Valley don't want that kind of restaurant. Forget about it. I was crushed. I was just crushed. I was like, shit, what am I going to do? I turned to Bob and Bob said, great idea. Let's

• 50:49Speaker 02

  do it. That's all I needed. That little bit of encouragement that led me again to really pursue, you know, with the total commitment to buy this restaurant.

• 51:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You even had some investors, I guess, who's who offered to back the restaurant, but they wanted control.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was one investor who offered to bankroll me all the way. And I was sitting in the garden at the French Laundry with him at the time and.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  He said, but I want control over everything that you do in your future.

• 51:22Guy Raz?

  He wanted a stake in everything you did in your future.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Everything I did in the future.

• 51:26Guy Raz?

  So he would give you the money for this restaurant, but then he owned a part of you forever.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Exactly. You know, actually, I felt I was like talking to the devil for a moment, even though he was a friend.

• 51:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  And I was fearful because if he was gonna do that for me, would he do it for somebody else? Right? If Thomas Keller said no, would he go out and get another chef?

• 51:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  So I had to go to Donna and Sally and explain it to them. And they said, don't worry about it. We're supporting you, which was, again, you know, a great encouragement and made me feel really safe in my endeavor.

• 51:58Guy Raz?

  I mean, stressful because you're vulnerable, right? And this is somebody who's got a lot more, you know, means and resources. Essentially, you're thinking in your head, okay, this guy's just gonna find another person like me and just replace me and back this thing and that restaurant's gonna go to him.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Yep. So this was a daily emotional challenge for me is the feeling this. There was something, you know, again, there's so many stories that are wrapped around purchasing the French Laundry, but there was, again, significant things that happened. There was a article in the New York Times, and I didn't really read the article because the headline of the article became really important to me. And the article, the headline was, having a dream is hard, living it is harder. And I really, you know, I thought that was me. I cut that out. I still have that in my office today, but I put it on my little makeshift desk in my small apartment in Los Angeles.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  And that became, you know, something I read every morning when I started making phone calls to strangers to ask them if I could send my business plan to them that they would invest in the restaurant.

• 53:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  And I used to go up on weekends to have open houses at the French Laundry. I would invite prospective investors to come. I would make my little coronets. I had slideshows of what the menu looked like.

• 53:17Guy Raz?

  Your coronets were the little mini ice cream cones filled with like salmon and...

• 53:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, salmon tartare and red onion cream.

• 53:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  I'd have the menus there, you know, I would take people around, trying to convince them that this was, this was gonna be a place where they wanted to invest.

• 53:33Guy Raz?

  All right, so May 1, 1994, you had raised $1.2 million, the money you needed to buy The French Laundry. I think you had like some like 50 or 60 investors, mostly small investors and maybe a few loans.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 53:49Guy Raz?

  So you get the money, you buy it. And when you finally opened up, which was, I think, a couple of months later, how was it? Was there a wait to get in?

• 53:58Speaker 02

  It was a catastrophe.

• 54:00Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Total disaster. The night of July 6 was a day that you wanted to forget. In fact, Ron Segal, one of our chefs at the time, when he won the award for Best New Chefs, he was asked the question, what was the most difficult or what was the most memorable night you had in opening a restaurant? And he said, "The night we opened The French Laundry. It was like the sinking of the Titanic. It was catastrophic, miserable, and lasted all night long." I had not cooked for close to two and a half years. We didn't have the money to spend a month on development, R&D development, training, all those different things that we do today. We opened the restaurant.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  I think the day before, I was shoveling gravel in the parking lot. There were several nights that we worked on producing the food, but actually putting it together into compositions, I knew what I wanted, we talked about it, but we never practiced, or we had very little practice. But the next night, we modified everything. We bought some more equipment, some more tools that we needed, and we opened on July 7. And John Mariani, who was one of the most significant food critics in that period of time, he wrote for Esquire magazine. Esquire magazine, every November, published their 10 best new restaurants in America. And on the second night, John Mariani came into The French Laundry.

• 55:28Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  And that November, we were one of the 10 best new restaurants in America. And that was just how dynamic. We were and we became. I mean, that became a cornerstone of what we do. And changing the menu every single day, that's where it all began, was that second night, that first night. Every night from that point on, we've changed the menu at French Honorable and Per Se.

• 55:50Guy Raz?

  Tell me about what you were serving and what, where did you get your ideas from? I mean, you had a dish, I think, early on, which is still, I think, one of your most famous dishes called Pearls and Oysters, which is caviar oysters and tapioca spheres.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  Oysters and Pearls is the name on the menu. And I'm happy to share where that came from.

• 56:14Guy Raz?

  Sure, because you're still, it's still on your menu to this day.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's one of those compositions that, you know, you're required to keep on your menu because people have read about it so much. You can't disappoint them by not having that dish available to them. It's like going to a Rolling Stone rock concert and them not playing Satisfaction. I'm sure they're tired of playing Satisfaction, but they played every single time because they know the fans want it. And the same thing with oysters and pearls. The guests really want to have that experience with that. But that was very simple, walking down the grocery store aisle with a great sense of awareness and seeing a purple box that said Pearl tapioca. And, you know, I picked it up and I'm thinking, where do pearls come from? Or do they come from oysters? And that became the inspiration for that dish, right? And then you add the caviar to it, it becomes a complete dish in celebration, right? You have the oysters, you have the caviar, you

• 57:00Speaker 02

  have a glass of champagne. What better way to begin your meal than that kind of experience?

• 57:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I think early, very early on, maybe in like the first few weeks, you had an applicant named Laura Cunningham, who would eventually become the general manager and then your sort of life partner and professional partner. And I think is like widely credited with helping you really kind of build this business out to what it is today. How did Laura come to, to your world?

• 57:35Speaker 02

  Well, Laura grew up in Napa Valley. One of her best friends was one of the Schmitz's daughters. You know, she spent significant amount of time at the French Laundry as a young girl. She had worked for people like Jonathan Waxman. She'd worked for people like Jeremiah Towers. So she was semi in the hospitality profession. And she found her way to the French Laundry because I was looking for somebody to help me understand the guest list that the Schmitz's had comprised. So she began by going through that process of just highlighting people's names and trying to identify who they were for me. She ultimately became the assistant manager at the French Laundry. And then finally, six months later, she became the general manager.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  And I have to credit Laura with so many things. I mean, you're absolutely right. Laura, you know, has been a significant, significant part of the success of the restaurant, but also in changing the way fine dining restaurants operate and the service that they provide. And that has been to casualize service in fine dining restaurants in America and around the world. I mean, she was somebody who had a strong belief in not having a formal dining room, but more a dining room that was more accessible between the guests and the service staff. And as our restaurant developed and became a much more intense experience

• 59:00Speaker 02

  or much longer experience, that kind of casualness allowed our guests and our service staff to really create bonds and relationships, which has really blossomed into something that the French Laundry is known for and per se is known for. People are surprised when they have dinner at the French Laundry and say how much fun it is.

• 59:20Guy Raz?

  Thomas, you learned a lot of, a lot from the mistakes and failures that you had had up until that point. And one of the things with the restaurant business, even a great restaurant like Raquel, is the margins can be really thin. The cost of food is high. I mean, really, most restaurants make their money off beverages. If you're lucky, you get people buying very expensive wine. And what did you, I mean, knowing what you knew at that point, now you're 40, you know, when you start the restaurant. What did you do differently that was going to ensure that this was going to work? Because obviously, you've got great reviews, but you had had great reviews at Raquel, too. So what was going to be different here? How were you going to manage it differently?

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Well, it's what I talked about when I realized the mistakes at Raquel. There needed to be people in the proper positions that were experts in those positions that allowed me to just be a cook, to be a chef.

• 1:00:14Guy Raz?

  But how did you find those people?

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  Well, Laura was one of the discoveries, right? One of the discoveries of a lifetime. So Laura ran the dining room. She ran the wine program. I mean, I know you think about that in its entirety, of a young woman, I think she was 27 or 28 years old, running what was going to become one of the most significant restaurants in America, and then finding somebody who had the financial capacity, a bookkeeper, a really good bookkeeper, who could keep us on track. And so that was the triad. That was the tripod. That was the three different departments that I needed to be able to succeed at running the French Laundry.

• 1:00:56Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, Thomas Keller learns how to become a restaurateur and eventually steps away from the daily heat of the kitchen. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 1:01:26Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. So by 1995, just a year after it opens, the French Laundry is getting rave reviews. And Thomas is able to raise the money to build a new kitchen. I've read, and maybe some of this is apocryphal, but I think it's true, stories about your perfectionism, just the cleanliness, which is great as a diner and restaurant, they want it to be clean. But like, things like that vegetables have to be blanched in rapidly boiling water, or that fish, like, the fish needs to be held so carefully in the same position that it swims in order to not stress the flesh of the fish. How, why is that important? Why is that stuff important to you?

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's important to me because it becomes obvious if you just study it for a moment, right? If you take the fish as an example, right? And for years, right, fish was laid flat.

• 1:02:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  And you're laying fish flat on ice.

• 1:02:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah, till you buy it in the fish, in the fishmonger.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  Right. There's ice on the bottom and there's ice on top.

• 1:02:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  And so what, what is happening to the fish? You've got pressure, you've got weight on both the bottom fillet and the top fillet.

• 1:02:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah, it compresses it.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so the shape of the ice is now affecting the quality of the flesh of the fish. But if you stand it straight up as it swims, there's no pressure on the flesh.

• 1:02:49Guy Raz?

  What is so important to you about? I mean, I, I hear you and that's the fish I want to eat.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  So why is it important is your question?

• 1:02:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah, the, the, just that whole concept of being perfect because it can be overbearing too sometimes.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  No, it's the, we want to set the example for the next generation, right? We want to elevate the standards, not just of our restaurant. We want to elevate the standards of our profession so that when people leave our restaurant, they go to some, to, to their next, their next post. And they're taking something with them from the French Laundry or Per Se or wherever they're coming from. And they're helping, right? They're adding value to their next post.

• 1:03:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You know, going back to an earlier question, given how challenging it is to turn a profit or a significant profit at a restaurant, obviously you have this restaurant, it's getting a lot of buzz. But I think within a year or two, it's named the most exciting restaurant in America by Ruth Reichel, who was the most influential food critic in the United States for sure. But it still means that you've got a, I mean, to keep those margins, to have a big staff. I mean, you had to have a big staff because of all the prep required to produce, you know, like the, you've got an egg with custard in it. It's a perfectly like, I don't even know what the tool is. You take the head off the eggshell and it's this perfectly, looks like an Easter egg,

• 1:04:13Guy Raz?

  but it has like deliciousness inside, all these things.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Guy Raz?

  How do you, I mean, was it, what did you realize that you had to actually expand your business? You needed to grow the business. You had to open up other restaurants.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  You know, funny enough, I didn't have to. I mean, this is where, this is where the modern American chef, right? It's a dilemma.

• 1:04:35Guy Raz?

  Yes.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  What was the example before us in terms of business? We didn't have a path.

• 1:04:41Guy Raz?

  Was a restaurant and that was it.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  Right. There wasn't a path, right? It's like, this is what you do to get to this point. This is what you don't do. You know, we were, we were the explorers. I mean, we went out to cut the path. People were looking at us going, okay, that's what Thomas did. That's what Danielle did. That's what Rocco Di Spirito did. That's what, you know.

• 1:05:01Guy Raz?

  But why? But why did you do it? Why did you, why'd you expand?

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  Well, okay, so we opened the French Laundry.

• 1:05:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  There were 12 of us in that restaurant total. None of us came from Napa Valley. I mean, Laura came from Napa Valley.

• 1:05:13Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  But most of us came from urban environments, which meant that we always had a place to go to after service.

• 1:05:19Guy Raz?

  Hey, go to a bar.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  Go to a bar, go to a club, go to dinner, whatever, right? We had opportunities to go somewhere else. In Napa Valley, when we closed and finished service at 10 o'clock.

• 1:05:29Guy Raz?

  Quiet.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  Everything else, they closed at nine o'clock.

• 1:05:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  There was no place to go. But then we also realized that everybody in Napa Valley is in the hospitality profession.

• 1:05:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  If you work for a winery, you're in hospitality profession, right? If you're working for a hotel, you're in hospitality profession.

• 1:05:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  So we decided the best thing to do was to open a restaurant that was open until midnight. And as many decisions were made at that restaurant, the French Laundry, where so many decisions were made, was sitting around the table at the end of service, not only defining our menu for tomorrow, but what would we do if we could? What would we do if?

• 1:06:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  That's a very important question that we ask ourselves. And, you know, one of the things we wanted to do was to have a place to go to eat. And so it was obvious that we needed to open another restaurant. And what would that restaurant be? So we all decided that it would be a French bistro, because that's what we missed the most.

• 1:06:23Guy Raz?

  And that became Bouchon, Bouchon Bistro.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  That became Bouchon.

• 1:06:27Guy Raz?

  Was there any, I mean, obviously, not everybody can eat at French Laundry. It's extremely expensive for most people. It's a huge expense to eat there because the cost to make that food is so high. Was part of the thinking behind Bouchon to create a more affordable restaurant too, where people could try your food?

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  I mean, obviously, that happened, but it wasn't in our thought. We're like, well, we need to do a less expensive restaurant. A bistro is going to be a less expensive restaurant anyway, just because it's a bistro.

• 1:06:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  But I just want to just comment, because you said, you know, it's very expensive to make the food. I just want to qualify that. It's also, we're buying ingredients which are extremely rare.

• 1:07:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  And produced, or harvested, or farmed, or caught by extraordinary individuals. And yes, we could buy a cheaper salmon, for example. You know, if I said, I want to only spend $3.50 a pound for salmon, somebody would sell me salmon for $3.50 a pound.

• 1:07:23Guy Raz?

  Get Norwegian salmon farmed, or whatever, yeah.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  Is it going to be what we want? Is it going to be what we want to serve? No. Which means, I don't really ask, I call them my partners, my purveyors, how much something costs. Primarily because we've had relationships with them for 30 years or more.

• 1:07:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  And they know the standards of what we're trying to achieve, so they're bringing us the best possible ingredients they have. And so, is it my job to negotiate a cheaper price with them? Or is it my job to support them and bring us the best ingredients they can?

• 1:07:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  And then, actually, the biggest expense is our labor, is our people who work for us.

• 1:08:03Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  Right? Giving them a wage that they have, work-life balance, giving them the benefits, so they don't have to worry about getting hurt or getting sick, right? They go to the hospital, they have insurance, and they have vacations, and they have opportunities to continue their careers in ways that, you know, are going to elevate the standards of their lives, their families' lives, their communities, and our profession.

• 1:08:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm just, I'm curious. Like, most people listening to this interview will not have been to the French Laundry, right? Whereas when we have Howard Schultz on, most people have had a cup of Starbucks, right? And, you know, especially now in this, I'm jumping ahead a little bit here, but we're sort of living at a time where the restaurant industry is under a lot of scrutiny, especially the fine dining part of the restaurant industry, you know, where people are sort of, you've got critics and you've got even some people inside the industry saying, well, what, who are we serving? You know, what is this ultimately about? And there's kind of been a movement lately, in the last few years, to democratize fine dining, to make it more accessible, to make it more affordable.

• 1:09:10Guy Raz?

  What do you make of it?

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  Well, it's fascinating that fine dining is always kind of picked on. Nobody's talking about how much it costs to buy a ticket and sit courtside at the Lakers game.

• 1:09:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Or do you even sit in a bleacher, like, not courtside?

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  Right, or whatever.

• 1:09:29Guy Raz?

  Just go into a football game, an NFL game, you're gonna probably spend 300 bucks on your ticket and parking alone.

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  Right. So, so why is fine dining such a problem? I mean, it's a rhetorical question.

• 1:09:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the answer is because it's perceived to be elite, elitist, right, for the elite. And I think it's, um, fine dining restaurants, I mean, the impact of those restaurants, what they do, has a trickle-down effect. It does have an impact on, on what other chefs do and how they think about cooking.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  Yes. So, we run an elite restaurant, right? It's just like an elite athlete. These guys on the football field, or baseball field, or the basketball court, they're, they're our elite athletes. They've worked their entire life to achieve what they do. They have God-given gifts, right? But they've been chosen to do what they do, and they're paid to do what they do because they're elite. It has nothing to do with being elitist. They're two different things, right? We run an elite restaurant, but we're not elitist. I mean, we want everybody to come into our restaurant.

• 1:10:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  We don't profess that we're gonna, you know, that it's gonna be there for everybody, or that you can eat there every other week, or every other month, or every other year. But when you are there... We want to give you something and we talk about this all the time with our team because our team is there every single day and complacency can become a problem because we're there every day. We have to remind ourselves that the guest that's coming tonight has been planning to come there for some time, whether it's a year or 10 years. They've saved their money or not saved their money depending on their economic wealth, but they are spending money and we want to make sure that when they leave that restaurant, they have a wonderful memory for themselves that they take home and that's memory that lasts

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  with them for a long time. I can tell you some of my great experiences around the table in some of the greatest restaurants in the world. I can't tell you how much they cost. I can tell you the stories behind them and those stories are dear to me and those experiences are dear to me. So when I think about how much I spent and what I received for that, it's priceless.

• 1:11:40Guy Raz?

  Thomas is kind of shifting a little bit. I want to ask you about the, just being a businessman, right? So 2003, French Laundry is named the best restaurant in the world by the world's 50 best restaurant list and that's a controversial list, but still it means something. I mean, I think you were on there three times. I think you can't be on there more than three times. And you win the James Beard, I mean, all of these accolades start to pour in. And in 2004, you go back to New York City to open a restaurant again, per se, which is still open, still very successful. Tell me about, you know, we can't get into all the different businesses you have. I think you've got about seven restaurants and

• 1:12:21Guy Raz?

  several bakeries in Las Vegas and New York and then you've got a bunch of different businesses and olive oil and flour and wine. I mean, I'm just touching on a few of them. But help me understand, like as you started to really push out, like per se was the first really big push. It's a, you know, now a Michelin three-star restaurant, very famous restaurant in New York City.

• 1:12:48Guy Raz?

  You couldn't spend as much time in the kitchen. And so you had to focus more on the business side of it, which is today would primarily what you focus on. But at what point did you kind of make peace with the idea that you were not going to be cooking?

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  That's a really good question. But, you know, I am in the kitchen every night that I'm home here in Napa Valley. And when I go to New York City, I'm in the kitchen every night that I'm in New York. I was just in per se. So am I cooking? No. But you have to kind of understand the dynamic of the team. And again, if you use analogy of a sports franchise, you know, Derek Jeter would love to play shortstop for the New York Yankees tomorrow.

• 1:13:27Guy Raz?

  But he's not going to be, yeah.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  He couldn't walk out on the field and be a part of that team. He has to understand that his time is over.

• 1:13:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:35Speaker 02

  So he needs to find a different thing. And that's kind of the same thing of my career and all cooks' careers, right? Is we come in as rookies, we become seasoned players, some of us become franchise players.

• 1:13:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  And then eventually, in the same way that Derek Jeter or, you know, Joe Montana, they can't do it anymore, they have to retire. So it's heartbreaking for them as it is for me. But you have to find a different purpose. So again, you know, you find your way into the dugout, right? And you become the field manager. You find your way into into the ownership and you become the general manager, you become an owner. And that's kind of what I'm doing today. And I, do I miss cooking? Of course I do. Do I want to be 25 and, you know, working the the Poissonier station like I did when I was with Daniel Boulud at the Polo? Of course I do. Which is a struggle for me. I mean, it's, I, you know, I talked to my best friend, who's one of my closest colleagues, a renowned chef himself here in America.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  And we remember our first goal was to open our own restaurant. We wanted to own one restaurant.

• 1:14:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  And then when we did that, we had more opportunity. We opened a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, or whatever. And now, you know what we talk about today? Him and I, owning one restaurant.

• 1:14:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:48Speaker 02

  Wouldn't it be nice to just own one restaurant?

• 1:14:50Guy Raz?

  I mean, you could, for example, there are certainly many examples of this. You could lend your name to a restaurant chain, right? And Wolfgang Puck is an example. You can go to airports and see Wolfgang Puck restaurants. But he's not controlling the quality of those restaurants. And so, obviously, you can make a lot of money doing that. You could have, you know, Thomas Keller presents bakeries all around the world. And I wonder whether, A, would you be willing to do that? And B, do you think you could do that and still control the quality of those places? Because you've got, it's a lot, but you have a relatively manageable number of places now that you can make sure that they are up to your standards.

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  That doesn't interest me. I've never been interested in lending my name to, you know, a can of soup or pizza. God bless Wolfgang. I mean, I don't criticize any of my colleagues for the past that they've chosen, right?

• 1:15:47Guy Raz?

  And I'm not either. Sometimes those pizzas are pretty good, especially when I'm hungry.

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  But, you know, I've been very successful at one-off restaurants. I mean, we know, running restaurants, that opening one restaurant, another restaurant, is not going to move the needle. It's not going to change your life, in other words. It's just going to be another burden. You think about, opening a restaurant is very exciting. It's seductive, it's exciting, but then you've got to run it for 20 years. You can't just close it. You have to open a restaurant that's going to be part of a community. And it lives on in perpetuity, or at least beyond you. I mean, this is the challenge I'm faced with today, right? I'm 67 years old. What happens to my restaurants, right? I mean, the French Aunty needs to be a multi-general restaurant. How many multi-generational restaurants do we have in America today?

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  You can point to Asia and Europe, and they're countless. But America, are there three or four multi-generational restaurants? And the French Aunty is one of those restaurants.

• 1:16:44Guy Raz?

  That it should continue.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  And it should continue, exactly. So I need to be thinking about that.

• 1:16:51Guy Raz?

  One of the challenges of being a chef and the hours and the commitment is it's hard to have a family. And I don't believe you've got any kids.

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  We don't, no.

• 1:17:01Guy Raz?

  So what does that mean? What does succession mean?

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  It means that you're going to find a person or a group of individuals that believe in your culture, in your philosophy, in your vision. You're going to be able to structure a succession plan that holds everybody to a certain standard into the future. That's it. So the French Laundry, I don't know if it can ever really be sold to somebody. So what is the French Laundry worth? This is the other thing we struggle with as chefs. My restaurants aren't named after me, yet they're so entwined with my name.

• 1:17:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  So what is the French Laundry really worth? What is the French Laundry worth with Thomas Keller? What is the French Laundry worth without Thomas Keller? If I sold the French Laundry and I wasn't there anymore, what is the ROI for the new owner?

• 1:17:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you, I mean, in order to decouple Thomas Keller from Per Se and French Laundry, and frankly, you know, you can go to either of those restaurants and it doesn't matter whether you happen to be in the kitchen or not, because they're going to be outstanding experiences. Like you've created an environment where, you know, at this point, the people working in the kitchen are probably even more skilled than you because they've just been doing it, right? And I'm sure you take a lot of pride in that.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Guy Raz?

  But to decouple yourself from those restaurants, to depersonalize them, do you need a person? Do you think that there has to be one person where the attention is focused on, like an upcoming chef or somebody that people would say, oh, this is now, you know, so-and-so's restaurant?

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  It's a good question. I mean, you know, so when I, when we opened Per Se, I wasn't the chef anymore.

• 1:18:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:44Speaker 02

  We hired the right person, we trained them, and we mentored them. And if you do those three things correctly, What happens is that person is better than you are because if they're not better than you, then you have not done a good job.

• 1:18:55Guy Raz?

  Then you failed as a leader.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, you failed as a leader. So, does it truly matter if it's a person in name or if it's a group in name? You know, you look at the Brooklyn Dodgers, 1955, and look at this, yes, there were significant people that were on the Brooklyn Dodgers, but it was the Brooklyn Dodgers who won.

• 1:19:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  Right? And that's what we have to be, that's what we have to be. We have to be better as a team through our individual abilities.

• 1:19:21Guy Raz?

  Thomas, you, I mean, you became the first American chef and one of the very few chefs in the world to have two Michelin three-star restaurants. You know, for people who know that, it's like being in the, at the top of the All-Star League in cooking. But it also makes you a target, right? And you did get a really nasty review, Perse did, in 2016 in the New York Times. Pete Wells, the food critic, I mean, he just, it was a really harsh review.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:53Guy Raz?

  And I imagine the instinct is to be like, screw you, you're wrong, I hate you. But you actually responded to this saying, okay, we've done something wrong and we need to actually, tell me what was going on. Why did you, I mean, was, was he right in your view? I mean, was his review fair? Because it was, was quite a harsh review.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, a couple of things. So, every accolade that we receive or anybody receives is for what you did yesterday.

• 1:20:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  It's not what you're doing today or what you're going to do tomorrow. So, you know, we, we appreciate criticism. I mean, that's the one thing we ask, like, what didn't you like? I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to know what you liked. I want to know what you didn't like because that's the only way we can make improvements. So, Pete pointed out what he thought we did wrong. And I, I took it on as my responsibility to go to all of my restaurants and explain what happened. And so, you learn from those experiences. But at the same time, today, you have countless, you know, just look at Yelp. I mean, everybody's a critic. So, the resources for food and restaurant experience and knowledge is far diverse today than it was before. And so, a lot of my staff who are very young looked at me going like, chef, we don't read the New York Times, so it's okay, don't worry about it.

• 1:21:04Guy Raz?

  But it did change, it did change things about what you did at the restaurant?

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  Well, here's, here's what I told the team. I said, the only way... That we're going to make a difference with our with our guests because they're not coming back. The New York Times is not coming back is to make sure that every guest that leaves this restaurant, leaves the restaurant with one thought in their mind. What the hell was Pete Wells talking about?

• 1:21:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  Out of that conversation, we coined one of our phrases, one guest at a time.

• 1:21:38Guy Raz?

  Thomas, when you think about your life and career and where you are today, you've kind of sealed your place in, certainly in the history of modern American food. So many chefs think of you as like the Papa Smurf of chefs, if they're all Smurfs. How much of your of your success do you attribute to the work you put in? And how much do you think has to do with luck?

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  Well, you know, somebody told me a long time ago, a very wise man told me a long time ago, luck comes to those who work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So you're casting it wide enough, you're bound to catch a little bit of luck. You know, I'm considered one of the best chefs in the country, yet I know there are many chefs out there who are better than I am. And why was I chosen? Why do I live this life? Why do I sit here with you talking about my career and not another chef? Well, some of that has to do with being in the right place at the right time. But there has to be the desire and the determination and the commitment to actually go out and try to do what we do in order to actually have that opportunity to be lucky.

• 1:22:50Guy Raz?

  That's chef and restaurateur Thomas Keller. By the way, one of Thomas's most famous creations is a dish he developed for a rat. Thomas was a consultant on the film Ratatouille, and he came up with the recipe for the stew that's made by Remy and served to the food critic Anton Ego. Thomas even made a cameo appearance in the film. On IMDb, he's credited as playing food snob number one.

• 1:23:20Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of this show, and it's totally free. This episode was produced by Alex Cheng, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant, with technical assistance from Josh Newell. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Liz Metzger, Carrie Thompson, Elaine Coats, John Isabella, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.