32 Yolks: From My Mother's Table to Working the Line by Eric Ripert Veronica Chambers

Author:Eric Ripert, Veronica Chambers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Food*Reference*Memoir
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

As much as Maurice hated working with me, Chef Bouchet made it clear that the situation wasn’t going to change. “No matter what, he’s staying. You’re dealing with him,” he was told. Before, Maurice had been manning the fish station by himself, sending out dishes for 120 covers a night. If he got rid of me, he’d be back on his own. But more important, no one said no to Dominique Bouchet.

At thirty-two, Chef Bouchet was young to be running the three-star kitchen at Paris’s most storied restaurant. But he had the natural authority of someone twice his age. Handsome, powerful, and disciplined, he looked more like a movie star than a guy who’d spent a career behind the pots. Thirty years before the invention of Food Network and the popularity of celebrity chefs on TV, Bouchet glided through the kitchens of Paris like there was a camera following him. His every move was elegant and he executed complicated dishes with ease. At a time when the top chefs of the world were messy, slovenly characters with outsize personalities that said they didn’t give a rip, like my friend Jacques, Bouchet was different. Even the way he put on his apron and toque was perfection, crisp and flawless. He was still a young man, but Bouchet had taken over one of Paris’s oldest, most venerable restaurants. We were all in awe of him. He was the savior of La Tour d’Argent.

Bouchet had apprenticed with the great Burgundian chef Marcel Pouilly. And, like me, he’d attended culinary school. Paris at the time was buzzing with culinary talent. Among them, one chef stood out as the one to beat: Joël Robuchon. Bouchet and Robuchon had crisscrossed paths throughout their twenties at Paris’s finest hotels and restaurants, always with Robuchon a little ahead of Bouchet. They had worked together at the opening of the Concorde Lafayette, with Robuchon as executive chef and Bouchet as one of his sous-chefs. Then Robuchon went to Hotel Nikko and Bouchet to Jamin. But when he was just thirty years old, Robuchon made a play and successfully purchased Jamin. He needed to discreetly get Bouchet out of the way, so he arranged for Jacques Sénéchal, the chef of La Tour d’Argent, to move to the Nikko. Robuchon then moved Bouchet to La Tour d’Argent and kept Jamin to himself. The rumor was that Robuchon was part of a secret society of Masons and that the extent of his power ranged much further than his stovetops. More than the rising prince of the culinary world, he was regarded almost as a mystic who could influence the rich and powerful at will.

With Bouchet safely ensconced at La Tour d’Argent, Robuchon hired a team of young, talented chefs, and set about reimagining the restaurant as an innovative showplace for an evolution of the increasingly popular “nouvelle cuisine.” Within a little more than a year, Jamin was awarded an unheard-of two stars from the Michelin guide. Two stars were impossible for a

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