Eric Ripert

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1:18Over the last few days, when I tell people we're doing a podcast with Eric Ripert, their faces light up. At the River Cafe, we spend our days making ravioli with ricotta, veal and chianti, panna cotta with grappa. But when we as chefs come together, we talk about French food. The bouillabaisse, the pommes dauphinoises, the tartatans. Eric Cook's French food were inspired by Italian, but maybe we're not so different. He's been the chef at Bernardin, his Michelin three-star fish and seafood restaurant for more than 30 years. I'm ahead by four years having cooked at the River Cafe since 1987. In a profession that is ever-changing and always challenging, Eric is an inspiration, a mentor, and someone we look up to.

2:06Today I'm here in New York with him, talking about us living in different cities, cooking the food of different countries. But you know what? We're pretty much the same. Two chefs with much to share. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here, and thank you for this great introduction. No, that's true. So I thought it would be disrespectful for the great chef to read a recipe from the River Cafe. So I would like you to read it yourself of one of your recipes. And we chose... The fish soup. I'm going to start with a quote from you, Eric. Yes. And you wrote in this book, Think about your favorite dish.

2:47For many of us, it's something we ate in childhood, whose deliciousness lies in how uncomplicated it is. For me, it's a simple fish soup made by my grandmother. This is the most rewarding way to approach cooking, using culinary knowledge to achieve simplicity. Yes, I have very vivid memories of grandma doing the fish soup. You do? Oh, for sure. Tell me about your grandma. So I had two grandmothers. One was Italian, one from Provence. Okay. And they both made fish soup, by the way. Of course. But my favorite memories is the one from the Italian grandmother because on the weekend, the family will gather together, like all the uncles and cousins and my grandfather and grandma and so on, and they will go fishing and scuba diving and catching whatever they will catch.

3:43And then my grandmother was in charge of the lunch. She would make the table for 20 people, 25 people. She would prepare a lot of things, salads and appetizers. But she would prepare for the fish soup. So whatever fish was coming back, it would be cleaned very quickly. And then she would make the fish soup there on site. And we would eat that fish soup, I don't know, an hour later or two hours later. That was cooked under the trees, overlooking the… This is in Antibes, is it? Yes, close to Antibes, between Antibes and Cannes. Okay, well, do you want to read the recipe and then we can talk more about what we're going to talk about?

4:25So for the fish soup, we use a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil, one medium onion, thinly sliced, half a bulb of fennel, trimmed and thinly sliced as well, four cloves of garlic, chopped, one teaspoon of saffron thread, three cups of can-hole tomato with their juice, a quarter cup of perno, one bay leaf, two pounds of egg filet, skin cut into chunks, or you can ask your fishmonger for lean white fish, scraps potentially, fine sea salt, and freshly grinded black pepper. And then in a large, heavy bottom pot, You eat the extra virgin olive oil over medium heat. You add the onions, the fennel, the garlic, and you saute for five minutes.

5:20You stir in the saffron and cook until the vegetables are softened and translucent, which takes about five minutes again. Then you crush the tomatoes with a fork. You add them to the pot along with the perno and the bay leaf. Then you season the fish with sea salt and white pepper and add it to the pot. You add enough water to cover the fish by about one inch. You bring it to simmer and you cook for 25 minutes. Then you remove from the heat and you let stand for five minutes. You remove the bay leaves and then you strain the broth through a colander into a pot. You puree the fish and vegetables in batches.

6:05Ah, you pureed them. Yeah. Yeah. In a food meal and whisk the puree back into the broth. And then you season with sea salt and white pepper. And then you divide into among warm bowls. So that's the recipe of the book inspired by grandma. Yeah. Grandma was not using egg. She was using whatever she was having. And you said she made this every week. Did she always make this version of it? Was it? Very similar to this. Yeah. And she will improvise a lot as well. You know, I mean, for the book, we had to say half a cup, quarter of a cup. She was not measuring. She was like, okay, give me the garlic, let's peel it and let's chop it.

6:48And the same thing with the onions. It was very instinctive. She didn't have to really follow her recipe. Amazing. And did she inspire you to cook? Do you think she was the person that made you want to be a chef? My two grandmothers inspire me a lot. And my mother was an amazing, amazing chef. Tell me, because it's interesting. I always say that in all these interviews that we've done, the grandmother. The Italian one was cooking very Italian, soul food. She was cooking like great Italian, northern Italian food. And I loved it. And then my grandmother from Provence was doing the same with Provencal food as well, which is a little bit similar to northern Italian.

7:31but has some subtle differences. I did the drive quite recently from Santa Margherita to Genoa to Nice and suddenly you were in Italy and now you're in France. And, you know, the farinata, which they do in Italy, is the Italian version of the soca. Soca, the soca, yes. Yeah, which is in Nice. And what else do they cook? Like my grandmother in Provence, she was from the region of Avignon. So in Avignon, they're not close to the sea. They are obviously inland. And she will do like a baby leg of lamb, roasted. And then my grandmother, the Italian grandmother, wouldn't do that. But she will do also bucco, for instance.

8:22My grandmother in Provence will do a cocovin. My grandmother in Italy didn't know what Cocovin was. And those were subtle differences, but they were important. My mother was obsessed with the chefs from Nouvelle Cuisine at the time. So the Michel Gerard, the Paul Bocuse, that generation. And at home, she was cooking lunch and dinner, those elaborate meals with appetizer, main course, cheese, which she didn't cook, and dessert. that were different from lunch to dinner, on a different pattern of tablecloth, different china. It was unbelievable. For who? Who would she be cooking for? She was cooking for myself, stepfather, and my sister when she was old enough to be at the table with us because she's much younger than me.

9:16She did this every day? Every day. Well, she was a business lady. So she was in the fashion industry. she was importing the brand Courage for Spain and Andorra. Short skirts. Yes. Love those. And so she was very busy with the business, but she would wake up at 5 a.m. to prepare the meal and then she would finish whatever needs to be finished, all the little details during lunchtime and then same thing at night. And sometimes after the dinner, she will start to cook for the desserts, Like if she was doing, I don't know, a baba or rhum, she would start to let the baba dough, you know, rise and so on.

10:03Yes, I mean, it was amazing. But do you think she would have liked to have done that as a career? No. No. She wanted to do it because for the art of doing it, for the love of doing it, and she wanted to feed the family. So you had this incredible life of having food that was a priority in her day and your stepfather. And different styles too. Did you ever cook with her? With my mom? Yeah. Later in life, because in the beginning they allowed me to watch and eat anything I wanted, but they really didn't want me to touch anything. They were like, you're going to mess up the kitchen, don't touch it.

10:40So I was eating. and just before I went to culinary school, my mom started to allow me to help her in the kitchen. She sounds amazing. Is she still cooking? She cooks for herself and she sends me pictures sometimes and I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing. Like the other day she did the duck confit and then, you know, she has the, I don't know how you call it, those little, for the bone, those little white. Oh, the little things, the white things you put. Yeah, those white, it's like a little heart. So she still has those kind of details. And I'm like, oh my God, how can you do that? How do you look back at the food of the Nouvelle Cuisine?

11:23What do you think when you think of that food? Well, as you know, Nouvelle Cuisine at one point became really a bad word. And it became a caricature of... Big plates and little food. A little food, and I always have this image of like three string beans parallel to each other. But Nouvelle Cuisine in the beginning was a revolution. We were coming out of the era of Escoffier. It was a different mindset where the sauce was not hiding anymore the flavors, but the sauce was enhancing the star of the plate, which was whatever protein, mostly, or vegetable you decide. And also, it was the first time that chefs were plating their food.

12:06Yeah. Oh, really? Until then, the food was on platters, and the waiters were serving the food, or the clients were serving themselves from the platter. Yeah. But the first chef to say, I'm plating my food in my plate, was the Trois Gros. So you grew up in a house where food was a priority, where your mother cooked, your grandmothers cooked. Yes. Tell us about your journey to becoming a chef, from being a child that wasn't allowed in the kitchen, to being, I think, a 15-year-old that started cooking. What happened at 15 when you decided to be... Well, at 15, I cannot go to school any longer because my grades are so bad.

12:53so I end up in a principal office with mom and he's explaining to her that I have to find what they call a vocational school or a career what year was this? it's 1980 and I look sad but I'm really happy because I want to go to culinary school so the principal promised to my mother that he would do everything possible to send me to a culinary school and he had a friend who was a principal in Perpignan. And I was accepted. I don't know how, but I was accepted in culinary school. And then I was a very good student there. Well, that's the thing. If you find what you love, you don't have to... I really loved everything about the restaurant industry.

13:43I was... First year, we were waiters and cooks. We were learning both and we had some classes of oenology, which is about the wine. And I was having a blast. And my grades were excellent. In math, I was still a bit weak, but I was putting a lot of efforts. I was good in Spanish because I live in Andorra, so I could speak Spanish and French. I didn't speak English at the time. And in the kitchen, I was a little bit bored because we were learning old-fashioned recipes from Escoffier, basically. So I was a bit bored, but I knew I was learning the basics. So I was very diligent about listening to what the directions were from the teachers.

14:31And my grades were great on the first year. On the second year, same thing. At my exam, which was after two years, I had to do a goulash. and the rice pilaf with langoustines in a sauce nantuya. And I did a good job because I graduated with honors. And then I was like, this is the beginning. I mean, I knew it was the beginning. I wanted to be the chef that I am today. I wanted to be in a restaurant that has a big kitchen with a lot of equipment, with a lot of cooks, a lot of waiters, a lot of, a great team. a beautiful china and a great wine cellar and everything else. And that was my dream. So at 17 years old, I write a letter to the 18 three-star Michelin restaurants in France because it was 18 at the time.

15:28And nobody answered. They didn't? Nobody. So then at one point, I go back and I write to the two stars. And then Maxime sent me a letter saying, we don't have a spot for you. And that's my only letter. And then three months later, I received a letter from La Tour d 'Argent. Ah, that's... And at the time, they were three stars. Yeah, of course. And they were celebrating in 1982 their 400-year anniversary. Anyway, I ended up at 17 years old in La Tour d 'Argent in Paris. After reading that letter, I called them and I said, you know, I'm Eric Repair and I received your letter. And when do you need me?

16:11and they said, we need you tomorrow. And I was like, well, tomorrow is going to be tough. But three days later, I was with my suitcase in Paris. Where did you stay? In a tiny hotel. And then I find finally a place. It took like a couple of months to find a place. It was very, very challenging. That's so young. 17 in a kitchen like that. What was the culture of the kitchen? What was it like? Very old fashioned. Yeah. A lot of abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse. That was the culture in those kitchens at that time. And also, I have to say, I was the youngest in the kitchen and I was not necessarily the best.

16:54And they were patient, but at the same time, they were very abusive. And as you probably know, in France, it was a philosophy behind it. First of all, it made no sense to me. but they wanted to break you psychologically and rebuild you as a champion, which is ridiculous. I think it was more an excuse to let the chef be abusive and have those tantrums and be aggressive. And someone who's angry, it's not a quality to be angry, let's put it this way. So I learned the hard way. Did you think of giving up ever? No, I never thought of giving up. I was obviously at times down and not happy, but my vision of becoming the chef that I became was never compromised.

17:51The ambition kept you going. It was, yes, but the ambition was not about being number one or being rated. The ambition was to cook great food and create an amazing experience And it has always been my vision, all my life.

18:36dot co dot uk

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20:16Need flexibility? Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa anytime to fit your space, whether it's a growing family room or a cozy apartment. Plus, they're earth-friendly and trusted by over 200 ,000 happy customers. It's time to upgrade to a stress-free, mess-proof sofa. Visit washablesofas.com today and save. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. From Tour d 'Argent, how long did you stay there? Tour d 'Argent, I didn't stay too long. I stayed about a year and a half. And then the chef called me in his office and said, I heard that you want to move because you want to change.

20:57And he said, I will tell you when you're leaving. And I said, yes, chef, of course. And a month later, he said, go to this place. It's called Jamain. Ask for the chef. His name is Joel Robuchon. Robuchon. And he's waiting for you. I'm basically like 18 and a half, 19. And I go there. I have no idea where I'm going. And I met with Joel Robuchon. Very sweet man, very kind man, great contact. And then he's telling me that I'm starting in a month from now. Was the culture in that kitchen the same? Was it abusive and frightening? Robichon was not violent physically. He didn't want violence in his kitchen.

21:46Was there violence, actual physical violence? Yes. Chefs were kicking you in the shoulders. sometimes it was some physical battles in the coolers or in the staircase or things like that. It was, definitely. But at Joel Robichon, it was very different. He didn't want that. He was not a screamer, but he was very, very difficult. And it was a painful experience with him as well because he was so demanding on himself and so demanding on the team, he was never happy. And every day he was coming and every day he had some negative comments. Every day, but not necessarily articulating what was wrong, just like a frustration about it.

22:40And I don't know if you ever heard that, but he was looking at every plate coming back in the kitchen. And when something was left in the plate, even a tiny, tiny bite, it was a disaster. Yeah. How long did you stay there? So I did a year and something, and then I went to do my military duties. Yeah. So I was, of course, sent to the kitchen. Oh, you were? Yes. But on my first day in the kitchen was calamari American. Mm-hmm. I was like, hey, this is cool. And then the calamari American was basically frozen calamari with a bechamel, ketchup, and brandy. Okay. And then at night, they were doing spaghetti with something, and they managed to burn the spaghettis in the water.

23:26So it was in the water? Because the heat was coming from underneath. They dumped the spaghettis, they stuck to the bottom of the pot. Where was this? It was in Castel-Sarazin, which is in the southwest of France, near Toulouse. So anyway, I went to see the general. And I said to him, I don't mind to do my military duties, but please get me out of this kitchen because I'm going to be depressed. And he laughed at me and he said, I'm going to send you to the commandos. You're going to learn. And I was skinny like this. And I was like looking at him like, you know, I can't do that. And he laughed and he said, you want to be my waiter?

24:10I said, yeah, I would love to be your waiter. He said, okay. And I became, for the rest of my stay in the militaries, the waiters of the generals. I served the food. I didn't cook. And then on my last day, I received a call. And I thought it was a joke. And they called me and they said, you have a call. It's Joel Robuchon calling you. I'm like, that's a joke. It's not possible. And I look and it's a number. I call and it's him. And he's like, oh, thank you for calling me back. I heard that you're done with the military duties. I would like for you to come back. And I would like for you to be the chef poissonnier.

24:50Wow. À jamais. À jamais. And what do you think? At the time, I had a girlfriend. Many things were happening in my life. I was not really excited to go back to Paris. And I said, can I think about it? And he said, yes, of course. You have 30 seconds. So it was a yes. And I was like, yes, chef. And I went back to Paris. And I did two-something years again with him in charge of the fish station. Well, let's go back to coming here. How did you end up in the United States? So I went to see Joël Robuchon, and I said, you know, I would like to travel the world. And can you help me? And he sent me to the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.

25:35And I worked with Jean-Louis Paladin, who was an extremely talented chef. And what was the culture like there? The culture in the kitchen, what was that? In Washington, D.C.? Very relaxed. Yeah. Small team. Jean-Louis Paladin was very creative. I was happy because for me it was a different experience. I learned very classic food at La Tour d 'Argent. Then I learned rigor and techniques with Joël Robuchon. And then with Jean-Louis Paladin, I had a lot of inspiration from him to be creative. But I think with that, you know, I think with cooking, if you have the rigor first, then you can have the kind of maybe relax after.

26:18It's better to have that background. You have to start. You have to start with the rigor. You have to start with the basics and the rigor. And then you can start to be creative. And then you have to learn how to manage also a team. And that was Gilbert Lecoze in Le Bernardin when I joined in 1991. I was 24 years old and he said to me look I want someone to take care of my kitchen and if you respect the philosophy of Le Bernardin which is the fish is the star of the plate then you can do whatever you want here and I will support you and I had his support until he passed away in 1994 then I became partner with Maggie Le Cause his sister and the rest is history.

27:07It's history. I think it would be interesting to talk about the culture of the restaurants that were existing, the bullying, the anger, the tantrums, the physical abuse. I always say that I once had a young woman chef come to the River Cafe and she was describing her experience in another kitchen and she said that the chef had stood over her. She was getting souffles out of the oven And he said, you know, this frying pan is in my hand, and if those soufflés are not perfect, it'll be on your head. And I said, you know, what you should have done is put the soufflés back in the oven, got up, walked out, and gone to the police.

27:48The police, because that kind of threat is illegal, and it should be illegal, and you cannot do that. And I think that the fact that this was probably 20 years ago, but I think it's very interesting how our profession which was based on a kind of terror of teaching people through fear rather than hope has, I hope, changed. I mean in your restaurant it has, in my restaurant my friend's restaurants in London we don't tolerate that and also we have an open kitchen so you can't do that. We have an open kitchen which does not allow anyone to shop. Of course. Well, you can always have people who are vicious and find a way to do it in the back.