40 Fun Facts About Thomas Keller

A trip to which ice cream chain inspired the salmon cornets Thomas Keller serves at The French Laundry?

Baskin-Robbins sparked the idea for the cornet, a miniature cone filled with salmon tartare instead of ice cream. It sits among the playful small plates Keller built his tasting menus around.

Which actor did Thomas Keller teach to cook a fried-egg sandwich for the 2004 film Spanglish?

Adam Sandler learned the dish from Keller, who designed it as something a gifted bachelor cook might make for himself. It is a BLT with a fried egg added.

Thomas Keller, a consultant on Pixar's Ratatouille, has a voice cameo in the American version as which character?

A restaurant patron is Keller's voice cameo in the film, whose producer interned in his French Laundry kitchen. Keller also devised the fanned, layered version of the title dish served at its climax.

The stone building that houses Thomas Keller's The French Laundry was originally built by a Scottish stonemason as what?

A saloon came first; after a local law banned alcohol sales near the veterans' home, the building became a French steam laundry in the 1920s, which gave the restaurant its name.

What was stolen from The French Laundry in December 2014 while the restaurant was closed for renovations?

Wine was the target: thieves took rare bottles, most of them Burgundy, from the cellar on Christmas Day. Most were later recovered in North Carolina.

Thomas Keller began his kitchen career in which job at a Palm Beach restaurant his mother managed?

Dishwasher was the only post open to him because he was judged too young to handle a knife like his older brother Joseph. Keller says the routine taught him organization and ritual.

Playing himself in The Bear, Thomas Keller gives the young cook Carmy tips on preparing which dish?

Roast chicken is Keller's real-life favorite, and in the flashback he shows Carmy how to truss the bird for a staff meal at The French Laundry.

Which horror film star co-wrote A Treasury of Great Recipes, the first cookbook Thomas Keller received as a teenager?

Vincent Price wrote the book with his wife Mary, collecting recipes from great restaurants, and Keller's mother gave it to him. A spinach pasta from its pages became his first culinary disaster.

Thomas Keller once staged a pop-up version of The French Laundry inside which London department store?

Harrods hosted one of Keller's pop-ups, and another ran at the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong. A later pop-up in Napa stood in for his flagship while it was being renovated.

Thomas Keller was born in Oceanside, California, where his father was stationed with which military branch?

U.S. Marines at nearby Camp Pendleton kept a caged tiger as a regimental mascot, which Keller remembers watching as a small boy.

The French Laundry Cookbook won an award for first cookbooks named after which American television chef?

Julia Child's name is on the first-cookbook prize of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, which also named Keller's 1999 debut its Cookbook of the Year.

Which chef and travel host called Thomas Keller's The French Laundry the best restaurant in the world?

Anthony Bourdain's verdict was matched by Restaurant magazine, whose annual ranking put The French Laundry at number one in both 2003 and 2004.

Thomas Keller's The French Laundry settled on two nine-course tasting menus, the chef's tasting and one devoted to what?

Vegetables get a full menu of their own, the Tasting of Vegetables, and Keller grows some of the produce in a three-acre garden across the street from the restaurant.

Which Food Network baker, famous for elaborate cakes made in Baltimore, was once a stagiaire at The French Laundry?

Duff Goldman trained in Keller's kitchen as an apprentice before he opened Charm City Cakes, the shop featured on the reality show Ace of Cakes.

Thomas Keller's Per Se opened in 2004 in a Columbus Circle complex then named for which media company?

Time Warner Center, later renamed the Deutsche Bank Center, had Per Se designed into it from scratch, and Keller's restaurant was the first to open in its mall.

Which classic French sauce did the teenage Thomas Keller set out to perfect while cooking at the Palm Beach Yacht Club?

Hollandaise was the sauce he worked to master at the club, where he rose quickly to cook and discovered his passion for the kitchen.

Before buying The French Laundry, Thomas Keller started a small company to sell which product?

Olive oil kept Keller afloat after he lost a hotel chef's job in Los Angeles. He called the firm EVO and started it in 1992, the year he first visited the Yountville restaurant he would go on to buy.

A famous small plate at Thomas Keller's The French Laundry sets oysters and caviar on a bed of what?

Tapioca under oysters and caviar shows the humor Keller brought to French tradition, in a long parade of small plates that also includes a salmon tartare cone.

Thomas Keller's 2008 cookbook Under Pressure, drawn from his two flagship restaurants, explores which cooking technique?

Sous vide, cooking vacuum-sealed food in a water bath, is a method Keller began experimenting with in the 1990s. Reviewers called the book definitive but hard to follow outside a restaurant kitchen.

Thomas Keller opened Ad Hoc in Yountville as a temporary stand-in for a planned restaurant built around which food?

Hamburgers were the plan, but the six-month stopgap, with its single family-style menu each night, proved such a success that Keller made it permanent in 2007.

What links the kitchens of Thomas Keller's The French Laundry and Per Se, despite the continent between them?

A video feed runs between the two kitchens and plays on a television screen in each, so the cooks in California and New York can watch one another at work.

Which motto appears on a sign beside the clock in every Thomas Keller restaurant kitchen and bakery?

Sense of Urgency is the reminder Keller posts within sight of both cooks and dining room staff, pushing them to stay organized and focused from the start of the day.

How did Thomas Keller gather the $5,000 he needed to hire a lawyer for his bid to buy The French Laundry?

Credit card advances, drawn in $500 withdrawals from a cash machine over two weeks, paid the attorney who shaped his business plan. Keller then called 400 prospects to find his 52 investors.

Which legendary French chef presented Thomas Keller with his Legion of Honor medal at a 2011 ceremony in New York?

Paul Bocuse was a hero of Keller's, and it was his phone call that persuaded Keller to become president of the American team in the world chef contest that carries his name.

Thomas Keller's bistro Bouchon shares its name with a homely style of restaurant traditional to which French city?

Lyon's bouchons grew out of small inns that fed passing silk workers, and they favor hearty dishes and a convivial room over haute cuisine.

Which writer, author of The Soul of a Chef, collaborated with Thomas Keller on The French Laundry Cookbook?

Michael Ruhlman went on to work with Keller on more cookbooks, including Bouchon and Ad Hoc at Home, having first enrolled in culinary school to write about how chefs are made.

Which Chicago chef, who cooked at The French Laundry for four years, named a son Keller after his mentor?

Grant Achatz left Yountville and went on to open Alinea, which Gourmet magazine named the best restaurant in America in 2006, a year after it opened.

Which Danish chef, later famed for foraged Nordic cooking, spent four months in 2001 at The French Laundry?

René Redzepi worked under Keller before co-founding Noma in Copenhagen, which was ranked the best restaurant in the world in five separate years.

Which chef opened The French Laundry in 1978 with her husband, Yountville's mayor, and later sold it to Thomas Keller?

Sally Schmitt built her menus around local, seasonal ingredients, and Keller has paid tribute to her each year by serving one of her prix fixe menus.

Which newspaper critic cut Thomas Keller's Per Se from four stars to two in a much-discussed 2016 review?

Pete Wells found the food and the service wanting for the money, and Keller responded with an open letter of apology to his guests.

Which friend was Thomas Keller's partner in Rakel, the Manhattan restaurant he opened in the 1980s?

Serge Raoul, who had earlier hired Keller as chef at Raoul's, supplied the first two letters of Rakel's name. The 1987 stock market crash then cut deep into its business, and Keller walked away.

In The French Laundry Cookbook, Thomas Keller tells of learning respect for food by killing which animals himself?

Rabbits delivered live by a farmer taught Keller that an animal's life must not be wasted, so every bit should be used and cooked with care. His publisher wanted the story left out.

What did Thomas Keller build for himself while cooking at La Rive, a French restaurant in upstate New York?

A smokehouse let Keller cure and smoke food himself in the Catskill countryside. By his own account the smoker was rigged from an old refrigerator and used for salmon.

Which feature of The French Laundry was copied for the main entrance of Thomas Keller's Per Se in Manhattan?

A blue door modeled on the one in Yountville is purely decorative at Per Se, one of several quiet references its designer made to the original restaurant.

Which French chef hired a young Thomas Keller to cook staff meals at the Dunes Club in Rhode Island?

Roland Henin told Keller that cooks cook to nurture people, the remark that made him want to become a chef. He remained Keller's mentor for decades.

At which Paris restaurant did Thomas Keller make the chocolate marquise almost every night during his apprenticeship?

Taillevent was one of several top Paris kitchens where Keller worked unpaid in the 1980s, living frugally on his savings in a friend's apartment.

Thomas Keller's Hommage porcelain honors which French chef, the author of Ma Gastronomie and owner of La Pyramide?

Fernand Point wrote his recipes as short narratives without quantities, and Keller says the book, a gift from his mentor, taught him to interpret a dish instead of copying it.

Thomas Keller's TAK Room, which closed during the pandemic, was part of which vast Manhattan development?

Hudson Yards welcomed TAK Room in March 2019 as Keller's first New York restaurant in 15 years, a throwback to mid-century continental dining.

Thomas Keller's Surf Club Restaurant, awarded a Michelin star in 2022, is in which state?

Florida is where Keller grew up, and the Surf Club, set inside a Four Seasons hotel, revived the continental dining style of the 1940s and 1950s.

While The French Laundry was being renovated, Thomas Keller ran a pop-up at Napa's Silverado Resort under which name?

Ad Lib served American classics, and the name was one Keller had floated years earlier as a joke about what to call Ad Hoc if it outlasted its six-month plan.