Recently, I decided to take a day trip up to Napa Valley and check out Wine Country. It was a spur-of-the-moment trip and I didn’t think much about it until it hit me, I’d be going through Yountsville, I’d be right by the Laundry. I mentioned it to my wife and she could tell something was off by the way I said it. She suggested trying to make reservations for lunch.
For her, it’s just a Restaurant.
For a dude who grew up in Kitchens during the 90s, the place is more like a temple. It’s a monument to everything great about Food and Cooking, a beacon of light in the sea of bullshit trends and fads. Chef Thomas Keller and his entire crew set the bar and have continued to raise it over the years. Long before I had any aspirations of becoming a Chef, I knew that this dude was years ahead of his time.
Food is music.
I can find my pocket, pick up on the groove and jam with most people. I’m damn proud of what I’ve done with my career but Chef Keller is so much more. He’s the culinary equivalent of Prince; he’s a composer who is able to lead some of the most talented people in the world with a level of surgical precision that makes people suffering from OCD look like they have the attention span of a squirrel. Nothing is left to chance; even the texture of the linen has been thoroughly discussed. Now, I’d love to say that mistakes ain’t made but they are, the thing is, you’d never know it in the dining room. Even if half of the stories are bullshit and blown out of proportion, which a lot of em probably are, what remains is still a testament to a level of excellence that most people will never experience.
It’s not the price.
Most folks seem to balk at the idea of spending $400 on a meal and while it’s certainly not cheap, you’re being fed by some of the world’s best Chefs. What else can you experience the best of anything for that price? Not just really good, I’m talking the very fucking best in the world. This ain’t just my opinion, it’s the consensus among both other Chefs and some of the harshest food critics in the industry. It’s been like that for over 30 years.
The sad thing is, and I think even Chef Keller would agree, is that most of the people who can afford to eat there ain’t educated enough to understand how to enjoy it. They don’t know food, they don’t know method. They associate quality with price and that’s about it. These are the same people who add Truffles to Pizza, not because they like the flavor of Truffles but because they’re expensive and fancy. They’re not enjoying the food, they’re doing it for clout on social media, look everyone, I’m ballin!!! For the record, most of don’t know Truffles are mushrooms. I’m not saying that you have to be an Artist to enjoy Art, but it helps.
It will never be as good as it is in my mind…
As a line cook working in Bars during the 90s, long before we had heard of Bourdain, we knew who Keller was. This was prior to the Internet and the stories we heard were probably exaggerated but we still listened in awe when someone told us that a friend of their cousin had eaten there. You need to understand, up until last week, this place was only something that I had read about; it was a concept that was so massive, it couldn’t exist.
If I made reservations, it would be real. Call me crazy but I don’t want that. I want to keep the place sacred, in my own mind at least. I want the place to be a myth; I want the place to continue to be shrouded in mystery. That’s why I stayed outside and took a few photos.
Keller is a fucking legend.
No lie, I’m nervous even posting this out of fear that he might somehow catch wind of it and get pissed off. When I finally started taking food seriously, he was one of my big inspirations. I wasn’t trying to do his kind of food, but I was hoping to capture some of his mindset and attention to detail. It’s not what he put on the plate; it was how he got from the raw ingredient to the final product that fascinated me. It was his way of looking at things that captured my imagination.
Yeah, having him feed me would be great but given the choice, I’d rather get stoned as fuck and go to the Farmers Market with him and just listen to him talk about food and cooking and turning something simple into something beyond definition. I’d love to just sit and listen to the guy ramble on about food for an hour without concern.
Alas, I highly fucking doubt he’ll read this or ever know my name and I’m fine with that. He’s not a peer or a colleague, he’s a a living myth who doesn’t have time for meer mortals such as myself. He’s got a Kitchen to run, a crew to lead and customers at the door.
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