Eric Ripert
A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Eric Ripert, who is on book tour for A Return to Cooking. Ripert is the chef at Le Bernardin in New York City, which is a four-star restaurant.
I had read an advance copy of the book, and had some issues with it. While the recipes and the thoughts on food are quite compelling, the book comes across as very contrived. Ripert, who mostly manages now at the restaurant, wanted to spend some time cooking in various parts of the Western Hemisphere, using just what was available around him. And he took a painter, two photographers, a writer, and another chef. So it suddenly seemed more like a project, rather than a true sentiment. Everything seems sort of concocted to show the most brilliant aspects of everyone in the group.
And while hearing Ripert talk didn't change my mind about the book, it did give me some more insight into what he was trying to get across, and I find it unfortunate that it didn't work. To hear him talk, it was more about sharing the "thought" behind the creative process. Why does he decide to do what he does with food? Why does the painter show things in a certain way? What drove things in a particular direction? But that only comes through when you hear him speak.
Certainly he's very personable. Rather than standing behind a podium, the bookstore had, probably at his request, set up a comfortable chair for him with folding chairs for us facing it. So we were all sitting together, and it was more like a chat than an author reading.
He did say two things which amused me. One of them, I suspect, just comes from the fact that French is his native language, and he still carries a thick accent. When discussing Michael Ruhlman, the writer who accompanied him, he described him as the author of The Soul of a Chef (an excellent book, by the way) and a collaborator on "Ze Book of Thomas Keller," which capitalized the way I just wrote it is certainly how I think of The French Laundry Cookbook. The other amusing thing was that he said that in France, when you're a bad student, you end up in a restaurant. He said that the pretty people got put in the front, and ugly people end up in the kitchen. If you ever see a picture of Eric Ripert, you will realize the faulty logic here. Maybe he blossomed late, but he is a gorgeous man. But fortunately for the food world, he got put in the kitchen anyway.
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