This is a transcription of Eric Ripert's interview in 92Y's Food Talks with Anthony Bourdain and Gabrielle Hamilton moderated by their author/chef friend Michael Ruhlman.
Eric Ripert is the owner and chef of Le Bernardin in New York, a seafood restaurant in New York and one of the best restaurants in America, if not the world. He is also a guest judge in the Top Chef reality series.
Le Bernardin was recently awarded as one of the top 50 restaurants of the world by Restaurant Magazine and San Pelligrino along with Alinea, Per Se, Daniel, Momofuku Ssam Bar and Eleven as the only 6 American restaurants to make it in the list.
In this excerpt, Michael Ruhlman asked the panelists what made them the chefs they are today.
Eric Ripert is French, so forgive his english, please.
"I always considered myself having three mentors. Because it really taught me three different distinct things about the profession.
Joel Robuchon, being obviously the first one and probably the most powerful one in my life, the biggest impact. And he really taught me. I was a beginner. Obviously I had 2 years of experience and 3 years of culinary school.
That was really, really the beginning of the knowledge. And he really taught me how to make sauce actually. I really learned, like i said before, how to domesticate my movements. Which, I think, is very important. In cooking, if you want to cook something very refined you have to be very precise.
I’ll give you an example: If you put a chunk of artichoke with a fish, it will be very good. But if you cut it perfectly and you put the right amount of artichoke on that fish, that may trigger and elevate the quality of the fish.
So I think it’s very important for someone who cook, at a level where I am today, to have the knife skills from the beginning. To have the discipline to learn how to really anticipate the way a sauce is going to evolve.
Because a lot of mistakes in the beginning when you learn how to make sauces is that you think “Oh, it’s a rosemary sauce so I put rosemary” but it’s not like that. Rosemary infuses. Imagine yourself making tea at home and you’ve got the tea infused forever. And then you go at night and you taste your tea. It’s not the same as when you taste the tea immediately after you put the herb or the camomile or whatever. So I learned that from him. The technique. That was really Joel Robuchon.
When I moved to Washington and I discovered someone I adore, who was totally crazy. It was Jean Louis Palladin. And for the ones who knew him he was incredibly charismatic and a great artist.
From Jean Louis, I kinda freed myself from that kind of catholic school teaching. And I discovered rock and roll in the kitchen. And really I needed it obviously.
When I was trying to create, I will always go back to what I learned in Robuchon. So creations will be just a little twist on what he taught me. I was not really trained and motivated to create in the kitchen In Paris. I was trained to be one element of the team to be able to provide what he wanted.
And then with Jean Louis, he really let me express myself on the artistic level and creative level and I obviousy made a lot of mistakes but that was essential in my life as well.
And then when I went to Le Bernardin, Gilbert Le Coze taught me to obviously have respect for seafood and share a couple of tips and tricks. But I was already a trained cook when I went there.
He really taught me how to become a leader on my kitchen. How to be an inspiration. How to run a restaurant and be able to pay the bills and other profit, at the end of the day because we are not the Red Cross. We need to make money as a way of living.
He taught me how to deal with the dining room. I didn’t really dealt with it before, really. For me it’s a big deal because we took a vicious pleasure to burn the fingers of the waiter in the kitchen when I was in Paris. Giving them hot plate.
I matured tremendously with him and that was the end of the teachings with my mentors."
Eric Ripert worked under Joel Robuchon in Paris from 1982 to 1989. In 1989, he moved to Washington D.C. and started working under Jean Louis Palladin. It was only in 1994 when he became the Executive Chef for Le Bernardin at age 29.
It takes at least 5 years for a cook to train under a dimsum master before he is allowed to make one on his own. It takes twice the amount of time for an apprentice of a sushi master before he can receive blessing to make his first california maki. It takes almost a lifetime for someone working under a noodle sensei before he is anointed to make a single strand of hand-made noodle all by himself.
What happened to mentorship? Everyone seems to be scrambling to make a living that they don't find the time to devote years to train under someone they admire and respect. Everyone is eager to create their own Mona Lisas and Citizen Kanes before they even know how to conceive and execute them.
Although, there are some who pretend to be proteges. They'll pick a so-called mentor. Come in once in awhile to see the mentor at work. Jump to another mentor, come in again and observe. Maybe this time, ask a question or two. Before you know it, they're passing resumes with the names of their so-called mentors listed down as someone they trained under. Careers are launched with this MO, mind you.
Is this happening all over the world? Or is it just happening in our side of the world?
Yes, Gusteau said, "Everyone can cook..." What he failed to mention was, "...but you'll have to start somewhere before you can learn how to cook."
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