S E P T E M B E R / O C TO B E R 2 0 1 4 15 Celebrated Chef Thomas Keller smiles at the notion that his Michelin three-star French Laundry has been serving epicurean delights for twenty years. “We celebrate every day,” laughed Keller. The tall, slender Keller, known to his friends and colleagues as “Chef,” inspects a perfectly starched apron before tying it around his waist. Attention to detail, cleanliness and perfection is his signature and merits admiration by many of the aspiring chefs. My 17-year-old niece Hannah and I sat with Keller on his small patio outside the dining room as he pointed out the evolution of the French Laundry since it opened its doors in 1994. The restaurant building, located on the north end of Yountville and tucked behind ivy with an understated sign, dates from 1900, and is in the National Register of Historic Places. The building was built as a saloon in the 1900s by a Scottish stonemason for Pierre Guillaume. When a law was passed in 1906 prohibiting the sale of alcohol within a mile of a veterans home, Guillaume sold the building. In the 1920s the building was owned by John Lande, who used it as a French steam laundry, the origin of the restaurant’s name. In 1978, the mayor of Yountville renovated the building into a restaurant. Don and Sally Schmitt owned the French Laundry for much of the 1980s and the early 1990s, until Keller bought the restaurant. Since opening the French Laundry, the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, TKRG, has grown to include four locations of Bouchon and Bouchon Bakery – in Yountville, New York, Las Vegas and Beverly Hills – , Ad Hoc in Yountville and the Michelin three-star Per Se in New York. The French Laundry, however, is home, and according to Keller it’s time to prepare the French Laundry for the next twenty years. The City of Yountville recently approved Keller’s proposal to do a remodel and expansion to his famous intimate kitchen, though Keller is not sure when exactly the remodel will commence. The new kitchen will expand to 2,000 square feet. Keller said that when he started to plan the renovation, he was inspired by the Louvre in Paris, though plans and drawings are still being finalized. This won’t be the first expansion at the French Laundry. Much has been written about the close quarters in which the staff here has to maneuver around each other to create Keller’s world-renowned cuisine, but the 58-year-old chef said that’s not going to change. “No, not really, we looked at that as well,” said Keller. “The renovation of this restaurant has been continuous, from the day I bought it. Every year we close. Every year we make some moderate changes, and sometimes major changes. The last major change we had was that we closed for five months when we opened Per Se in New York. And there were major changes with the construction of the two new buildings for the office and the storage room buildings that are there, and we expanded the kitchen. But every year there’s always something that goes on here. And so, for us it’s been a conscious effort to continually evolve our restaurant. It’s very important to be pursuing that evolution; otherwise we’re stagnant. We never want be stagnant. The restaurant is now twenty years old, which makes Per Se ten years old. When we built this kitchen it was a very modest kitchen, and the design of the kitchen is evolving enormously. Literally this (gesturing to the patio), it was just a breezeway with screen windows and screen door. You know, it’s evolved. This area right here, where that window is, was an outdoor porch with a screen window and a screen door as well. So that’s evolved too; it’s always a constant evolution.” One thing that has not changed over the years is the number of seats in the dining room. It’s always been 62 seats, though the dining room has changed too, in its furnishings and its features. “We’re always going to keep it at 62 seats,” he said. “When we opened Per Se, we took all of the value and knowledge of this restaurant and translated it into Per Se. The functionality of Per Se is based on the functionality of the French Laundry. The scope and size is much different than the French Laundry, because at the French Laundry, you have a lot of different buildings that you see on our property here. The dining room is a completely separate building, on two floors. Then you have our buildings down in Napa for our storerooms, which house a lot of our things. With Per Se, it’s all continuous, in one location. It became the benchmark for professional kitchens.” The French Laundry was also one of the first restaurants to grow their own food, and that started with the previous owners. Eleven years ago, Keller moved the garden across the street. “So the garden at the French Laundry was always there. There were six garden beds; there were two beds at my house, which still exist today, so we had eight beds, plus an herb garden on this
NVLife_SeptOct_2014
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