A LIVE Tour of The French Laundry with Chef Thomas Keller

hi good morning welcome to the the French Laundry here in Yael California place that I really like to call my home I'm standing here in front of what has been recognized as the blue door here at the restaurant just a little history about the blue door I purchased a restaurant from a wonderful couple done in Sally Schmidt Sally was the chef at the time and her kitchen was right behind this this door Sally had chosen to paint her hood above her range blue so as we were building our new kitchen and moving in there in 1995 I realized that I wanted to maintain something of that period something to pay homage to - Don and Sally so we painted our front door blue it's become significant as our as our color palette for for our restaurant here at the French Laundry we walk you over here now talking about history and tradition in this building we want to walk over here and see our new kitchen building and here we have a very contemporary feel and that contemporary feel comes from the facade here I was working with my architect and he had asked me what my vision was for our new building and I thought about that for several months and realized one morning that I wanted to have a feeling of the Louvre where you have history you have tradition you have an iconic place and then next to it you have something contemporary something new something exciting and this is the result of that the facade is is fretted glass there are three panels of glass there with varying colors of green in it and of course we want to have something green because we wanted to feel organic here being in the Napa Valley here in the middle of the garden we don't want something to scream different so the green became very very important for us and as we start to develop around you'll see all of the difference landscape that really kind of mirrors and fills in with the architecture now let's go into the new kitchen and see that here we are getting in here it's it's quite a change from our our previous kitchen which was much smaller felt it may be a little more residential than we have here today but very proud of this I'm very excited to be to be in our new kitchen we're in our new kitchen now for 192 days right chef yeah so we've keeping count on that there are several features within our new construction which is which is quite extraordinary let me just talk about a couple here in the new kitchen our ceiling is is an area where we spend a lot of time in developing how the ceiling felt and we want we wanted to feel that you see the ripples in it the it kind of the feels like linen or like our like our aprons the folds and waves and our aprons the the way that the ceiling curves and it's all done through fiberglass so it's a fiberglass moulded ceiling so it's it's very interesting it's kind of cool the other thing that we're very proud of and something that has always been in in this kitchen even previous and certainly in in all of our kitchens certainly are our stars and here we have we have five stars and they represent three significant accolades for us one is Forbes magazine which gave us five stars for our restaurant and restaurants aren't just about about about the food restaurants are about the service they're about the ambience they're about the generosity of spirit that we try to convey to our guests also in those five stars our four stars which is San Francisco Chronicle our local food critic and Michael Bauer has bestowed upon us four stars since 1995 so we're very proud of that and of course in those five stars also our three stars and those three stars represent Michelin Guide our first our first three-star rating was in 2007 so those things are very proud of us that the stars remind us of the responsibility that we that we have to not only to ourselves but to our guests to make sure that we maintain the level of expectations to achieve those kinds of accolades let's go over here now to to David and not and see some things cooking in our or all-clad CK line cookware Werner chef so we have a couple things here I guess significantly is is the the the variety of different types of cookware that we have here at the TK line and that has to do with the more less the formulation of the materials some of them are just stainless steel as we have stainless steel aluminum have here in our our saute pan but also the same thing is the nonstick surface here in our are all cod rondo it's all stainless aluminum and of course then in our sauce pots where we want to have a little more precision in our cooking maybe the copper core formulation there where there's a copper center that helped that conductivity in our larger pots we may have just stainless steel where we're just boiling water so depending on the purpose and the use of the different pieces of cookware really defines what the formulation is so again do you have your chef just tell ya a slow-roasted garden squash I know it never hit the refrigerator yeah a long time ago simple is difficult is the most difficult you know we're talking just a few things they have to be extraordinary ingredients so the Pharisee or nice legal am from our friend in Pennsylvania right Keith Martin yeah beautiful beautiful legal and roasting their on again some some more garden vegetables and it looks like some fresh basil okay let's go over here and we're gonna maybe take a moment to see if there's any questions that I can answer from you right now so please let me know what they have everywhere from Palm Beach fantastic well thank you for for joining us today and we have two questions Susanna's wondering about the lid on the sauce pot oh cool yeah so the lid here it's a French it's a French lid and what that allows us to do we have three three three sizes but we have about six different size diameters of cookware and between the three lid sizes were able to accomplish covering all those six pieces of cookware and so what does that mean it means we have less lids so you know the lids typically a lid comes with every piece of cookware and of course so you have to store those lids it uses that much more materials so by using by using this type of lid allows us to switch between different diameters of pieces of cookware it saves room and your cupboards but it also saves material so thank you for being more sustainable by using this type of lid to work for you um it's a crime I think the most important thing about anybody who comes to work in a restaurant like ours and you know certainly you know all of our colleagues I think you have the same type of expectation I mean the most important thing is attitude I think you have to have the right attitude to come into this absolutely yeah right attitude you can come into a restaurant like this into a kitchen like this whether you're in the dining or whether you're in the kitchen it's the same it's that feeling that you can achieve which you want to achieve through collaboration through teamwork through critical feedback which is so important for us we're not always praising each other we're more critical of each other than praise even though we understand we we've done some wonderful things it's drilling down every day to the details and trying to figure out how we can do it better so I think attitude is probably the most important thing the second yeah the second is desire desire yeah that strong desire to do something yeah that continues to burn every day so here we have you know just just a little something about about being at home and and how to help to better how to better be a better cook at home and certainly that thing has to do with Nissim class what we call in our restaurant French word Lisa PLAs which really translates into being ready having everything ready that you need everything ready that you need from the time you begin the process of cooking till the time you serve the food everything has to be here and I'm not talking about just the products that you have the ingredients that you have I'm talking about the equipment that you have the the plate ware that you're going to put it on anything that you need should be all gathered together so that it becomes a seamless process from step one to to plating and serving so that's really really important reason plus we always drill it down with our young Chefs they have to have everything ready because when we start service you know do 75 80 90 people a night we can't be running off line to get something that we forgot or something that we need to finish the cooking process everything has to be right here this is one station so we have where everything that we need for that station for the for the for the the compositions coming from the station have to be here refrigeration or underneath or refrigerated rails all of our condiments everything right here our stoves right there it makes it so simple so nice and PLAs is really important have everything ready to go and last thing I want to tell you about about cooking and something we always do as clean as you go when you hear somebody call housekeeping in our kitchen everybody in the entire kitchen stops and starts cleaning up a little bit clean as you go when I cook at home by the time I'm serving my guests everything that I've used to cook the meal is already clean and put away so that can really sit down and enjoy the meal with with my friends and then they only have to clean up is is the dishes so anyway Thank You chef okay so step over here I think we have a one of our one of our our partners coming in our partners as relates to how we get our food and certainly air and entering key firuze our garden Sharon how you doing it's good to see you Erinn has been with us for almost a decade he is responsible with him and his team which is what about eight gardeners now yes we have three full-time landscapers in five burgers yeah so so we have quite quite quite a team of gardeners who really spend every day seven days a week working on our our farm across the street our garden across the street I should say which is almost three eight three acres we have about three acres there yeah and then we have a partner just down the road where we have an acre where we find it as well I'm so really really proud to be part of a culture where where our food comes from right next door and the French Laundry I just remind you is you know for the past 40 years we'll be 40 years in February it's always had a garden so the connectivity between a chef and where the food comes from is really really important so tell us some things we have today well today I'm bringing in some products that we grew across the street we have some dahlias for presentation we have a few different types of cucumbers of course the serpent cucumber or the oh my new stripe I love those and then we have the salt pepper cucumber and you can see how fresh they are because they still have the the filament this little fuzzy filling as you get into into the food chain right the food supply chain that typically wears off so you see these in a grocery store you may not when when one thing to look for in freshness of some of some of the foods that you're buying absolutely we we pick every morning for the menu that night and what we bring in is still basically alive and they're cooking it before it hits the fridge and that's a big part of the flavor we have some beautiful figs here yeah figs four to five different kinds things are my favorite I think my favorite fruit at least my favorite food at this moment I think that changes every time we see we see new new crops coming in right after the year I know we had some beautiful pears a couple weeks ago and theirs were wonderful we're my favorite then right but look at these zebra the zebra stripe and app as a community so not only do we grow our own fruits and vegetables but a lot of our neighbors will drop off you know sacks of of grapefruit for example or bring us vining trimmings for the hearth or bags of figs and things like that so a really really wonderful community here in Napa Valley of sharing and I think that's a very important thing remember is we always want to be able to share things with each other absolutely and here's some of our tomatoes we're producing about 1,500 pounds of tomatoes right now we have some beautiful mid-sized Reds we have azúcar we have some marble stripes some nice colors on all these the aroma tomatoes just tastes like nothing else there's something about the vine it's a deal on it vegetal that you get first for the little cut that's yeah just beautiful stuff some green zebras and some red zebras we have some lipstick peppers and then of course your pearl onions purple ATS and some whites gorgeous stuff what's summer without beautiful melons mhm we're just starting to hit on the melons we got about two wheelbarrows every two days right now coming in great and that's coming from our partner winery down the road and so this is the summer this is our summer garden and we'll transfer into or fall garden winter garden and then spring gardens just continuous redevelopment of the garden depending on on the season I think it's a good moment again where we can possibly take some questions certainly feel free to ask Karen or myself anything that's come to mind about in the garden right now okay go Erin okay okay right now what I'm excited about is the production and the bounty of August you can see what we're producing this is about you know ten varieties we have over 200 varieties of product coming out of the garden right now and the generosity of Napa Valley and what we get during the summer is just mind-blowing yeah I think I think that most excited about and they're over there right now we haven't started harvesting yet but our sunchokes our Jerusalem artichokes we produce about five to three two to three tonnes I think a year or something like yes yeah and the great thing about those we you know we begin them in the in the late spring right and they grow and of course it's a tuber so as the plant starts to die then you know then they're ready for harvest and we keep them in the ground for the next two or three months all the way it's too peppery all the way through February and so we'll just harvest them as as the orders come in as they're needed throughout the restaurants and it's just a wonderful it's just a wonderful thing to have that you've grown all throughout the growing season and then the plant dies but they're there they're really kind of protected underneath the soil so those are some of the things but as Erin said I think you know the garden at any time of year is producing just beautiful things for us and and whatever is in the garden is actually our favorite at the time so how come some are white some are black and some are stainless field okay good good question so the white and black are our new material from Silestone wood called decked on it's their latest they're late at their latest composition for four surfaces and we work with Cosentino and and and Silestone I start we worked with Cosentino on the decked on applications here which are on all of those surfaces all the walls all the tabletops are made up of Dec time and the difference between the colors is just these two tables here are the passes so a pass in a restaurant is where literally the the chef's the pastry chefs everybody passes the food or place the food here on the pass and then it's passed off to the service team who then delivered to to the guests so those are the surfaces but the other interesting surface here is the floor here we have a terrazzo floor which is kind of unusual in in a kitchen like this but for us throughout so we decided use Teressa for a couple of different reasons number one we've eliminated tile and grout lines so you know tile tile grout lines always harbor bacteria and always need to prepare the other reasons we've got these wonderful cove bases so it gives us a 2-inch cove base I know that may sound a little tech to do but from a cleaning point of view and we're always talking about cleaning and maintaining you know this this this wholesome environment a cove base like that for concrete which terrazzo is is very important for us Breeden was cooking vegetables on a nonstick pan yes she was saying she'll knees it's nonstick for eggs how do you we use gnostics in a number of a number of different ways so to benefit to benefit the caramelization we find that nonstick really works well although stainless steel does as well so just it's a matter of preference we we do use our gnostics primarily for things where we want to we want to be very careful with things that are a fragile if you will like eggs or crepes things like that you're certainly blinis are always done in our nonstick pans but occasionally we will do will also do we'll also do some pan roasting or carmelization which gives it that nice that nice that nice crustiness that deep flavor and of course that beautiful color format it's a tough one he's wondering do you have a favorite course at the French Laundry okay Matt it's that's that's that's again it's a hard question to answer because we really spend a lot of time in all of our compositions for the courses but I think about things that have been on the menu here since the beginning of the restaurant moistures and pearls comes to mind and and certainly that is a dish that people have heard about people have read about people who haven't been here really one experience it because of that people who've been here and coming back always loved it so they want to have it again it's one of those dishes that I think is kind of a complete experience in other words it's at the beginning of the meal affords us an opportunity to help helps begin a celebration of the meal by pouring champagne it's a very elegant dish you know the tapioca pudding if you will gives it a sense of mouth feel and texture which is which is very alluring captivating in that in that texture and then again I served with oysters poached oysters because where does Porter pearls come from if they don't come from oysters and that was kind of the inspiration for for the oyster at addition to that and then and then topped off with a beautiful caviar and again so you have the sense of luxury the this compelling texture this complete feeling of of the complete experience that's that is tied into not only the food that's reading but the beverage that you're drinking it so a great way to begin a celebration the French on day with the oysters and pearls finishing it with the classic coffee and doughnuts again a dish that we've had on the menu well actually only had on the menu for the first year and a half of the French Laundry and for the past 20 21 and a half years it's been served but it's never been on the menus for every guest here gets now a miniature version of that original dish called coffee and doughnuts so okay so that's a go over here and see Sarah I think Sarah's making some some fig jam right so again talking about things at the time of season for figs and we're doing this for a new venue composition correct us tell us about that chef this is going with some nice vanilla pastry cream and then it also gets a puree of Hinda copani on the plate the thing about figs again it has this wonderful texture to it it's very rich very smooth and figs really lend themselves to this kind of cone feature or this kind of candying or this kind of gelling and so it's just really really beautiful in that texture and look at the color that deep deep deep deep purple and of course we have our our macaroons which you know are some of our I guess our most satisfying way to to have something sweet and again so we have our macaroons here which we're going to serve as part of our of our mini Rd service or a part of that those little sweets those little snacks those little sweet snacks if you will that you get at the end of the meal tell us about we have our macaroon this week is lemon pad food that's infused with thyme from the garden and a lemon buttercream that we make with a lemon reduction so I know I should get a little yellow in there so how do you do that we make two different macaron batters yes and then as we're piping we pipe the big one first and then we go through with a smaller tip and we pipe the little yellow beautiful well that that's a you know what you think about the detail and the amount of work that takes to do things that are which maybe seem insignificant to - to some people but to us all the details are really really important I just want to take a moment to thank everybody for for joining us for joining me for joining my team in in our new kitchen kitchen that were really proud of hope that you were able to come and visit so thank you very much you you

Channel: Williams Sonoma

Views: 142,420

Rating: 4.8466353 out of 5

Keywords: thomas keller, the french laundry, facebook live, live, restaurant, kitchen, restaurant tour, kitchen tour, all-clad, all-clad TK, yountville, Williams Sonoma

Id: JSynCoY8lTs

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 29 2017