There was only one problem with the plan as it was starting to unfold….we’d have to get a reservation, which if you ask someone who knows firsthand, is seemingly impossible. And if that makes me a hypocrite and a stereotype….I’ll live. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t care how big one chef’s ego might be, I’m not turning down some of the best cabernet sauvignons, best service and a chance to stuff my face with the most sought after grub in America if someone else is paying. Which is why I gladly took the chance to dine at The French Laundry when Jonathan’s mother generously offered to fly out from DC and take us there for the 30 th anniversary of his expulsion from her uterus…a memory I’m she was more than happy to celebrate being over! Some innate need to be the center of attention…in this case, by being a naysayer.īut as much as I hate the idea of being controlled by some marketer’s puppetry, the consumate foodie inside refuses to let that hinder my ongoing exploration of all things food and food related. If I learned one thing during my time in Hollywood it’s that “exclusivity” is just a fancy way to say GIANT EGO! And I barely have room in my life for my own. A shrink would probably diagnose me with some severe outlier’s syndrome. Since moving to San Francisco in 2007 it was “French Laundry this,” and “French Laundry that,” and without any tangible experience with Chef Thomas Keller, his restaurants, or French laundromats of my own, I was nonplussed with the notion of a “best restaurant in the world.” Unimpressed with the price, unimpressed with the exclusivity, and particularly unimpressed with the purposefully pretentious use of “the” in the name as an attempt to denote its uniqueness, when it’s surrounded by some pretty amazing dining experiences. That’s the same way I felt about Thomas Keller’s (and I’m using bunny ears now) “ The French Laundry.” I don’t know why, but I guess I have this guttural aversion to the collective consensus. Whether it was appropriate or not, I felt like photos and flashes would have been a distraction during a once in a lifetime culinary experience that I planned on devoting my every sense to.īack in the early 2000’s when everyone hemmed and hawed about Harry Potter, I was immediately turned off and had no interest in reading the books. *these are not pics of everything we ate at The French Laundry, and instead I’ve included some pics from a past visit to Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery in Yountville and the rest of a Napa Valley tasting trip. If you can't get to the French Laundry, you can now re-create at home the very experience Wine Spectator described as “as close to dining perfection as it gets.”Ĭlick here to view our online return policy.Anything less seems unacceptable when the bar is set so high…. One hundred and fifty superlative recipes are exact recipes from the French Laundry kitchen-no shortcuts have been taken, no critical steps ignored, all have been thoroughly tested in home kitchens. Most dazzling is how simple Keller's methods are: squeegeeing the moisture from the skin on fish so it sautées beautifully poaching eggs in a deep pot of water for perfect shape the initial steeping in the shell that makes cooking raw lobster out of the shell a cinch using vinegar as a flavor enhancer the repeated washing of bones for stock for the cleanest, clearest tastes.įrom innovative soup techniques, to the proper way to cook green vegetables, to secrets of great fish cookery, to the creation of breathtaking desserts from beurre monté to foie gras au torchon, to a wild and thoroughly unexpected take on coffee and doughnuts, The French Laundry Cookbook captures, through recipes, essays, profiles, and extraordinary photography, one of America's great restaurants, its great chef, and the food that makes both unique. And this, his first cookbook, is every bit as satisfying as a French Laundry meal itself: a series of small, impeccable, highly refined, intensely focused courses. Keller is a wizard, a purist, a man obsessed with getting it right. The most transformative cookbook of the century celebrates this milestone by showcasing the genius of chef/proprietor Thomas Keller himself. 2019 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the acclaimed French Laundry restaurant in the Napa Valley-“the most exciting place to eat in the United States” ( The New York Times).
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