(22 Mar 2017) A TOUR OF THOMAS KELLER'S $10 MILLION FRENCH LAUNDRY REMODEL
On a sunny morning in Napa Valley, America's most celebrated chef is reflecting on his career and the culinary empire that it spawned. Someday, he says, the dream is to return full-time to the place it all started, an old stone cottage known as the French Laundry.
At 61 years old, Thomas Keller entertains the thought of slowing down. Just not right now.
He's got new restaurant projects underway in Miami and at New York City's Hudson Yards. He recently flew to Hollywood for a segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live. And he's happily nearing completion of a $10 million renovation at the French Laundry, the fine dining mecca he opened in 1994 that's still booked solid a month in advance.
Keller says he remade the restaurant to ensure it thrives for the next 20 years. Most of the changes are behind-the-scenes. There's a state-of-the-art 2,000-square-foot kitchen that reopened last month, a 16,000-bottle wine cellar, extensive solar paneling, a new office annex and 9,000 square feet of new landscape design. The renovation took more than two years and was not stress-free.
"For weeks, I would wake up in the middle of the night and think, "Oh my God, I ruined the French Laundry," said Keller, who holds three coveted Michelin stars for the restaurant, and another three for its New York counterpart Per Se, which he opened in 2004. Keller is the only American chef, past or present, with two sets of three-star Michelin restaurants. The French Laundry has twice topped the influential World's 50 Best Restaurants list, also unprecedented for an American chef.
On a tour of the new kitchen and the French Laundry's lush culinary garden, Keller is vocally enthusiastic about the upgrades. He is also gracious, and humble, when asked about his significance to the culinary world.
"I don't wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and go, 'I'm looking at the greatest chef in America.' It very seldom comes up for me personally," he says. But when the issue is raised, he feels "an enormous amount of responsibility, that burden of responsibility on my shoulders to make sure that I'm trying to exemplify what that chef would be like."
Keller is clearly mindful of his legacy, which is part of the inspiration for the French Laundry's remodel.
As a measure of his ambition, Keller compares it to the renovation at one of the world's great museums, the Louvre, and how I.M. Pei's 1989 addition of the glass pyramid added an element of timeless modernity to a historical site.
The Louvre was "iconic. It was historic. Everybody knew it. And the French Laundry kind of represented that for me," said Keller, who even presented his architect with two pictures of the museum _ one pre-I.M. Pei and one after _ to capture the essence of his vision.
Keller teamed up with Snohetta, an architecture and design firm that spearheaded the recent three-year renovation of another museum, San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art. The restaurant stayed open during the construction, but the culinary staff relocated to a temporary kitchen built inside four shipping containers. Final touches on landscaping are wrapping up this summer.
"To actually stand in the new kitchen is the ultimate reward. It's absolutely amazing," says 36-year-old chef de cuisine David Breeden.
The attention to detail is typical of Keller, says Breeden, who has worked for him at the French Laundry and Per Se for 12 years.
Seated on a stool inside his new kitchen, Keller reflected on how his dreams have evolved during his career.
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