Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today has worked in
Speaker 1: the best restaurants in the world, taught thousands of hours
Speaker 1: of culinary technique, authored over thirty cookbooks, and at the
Speaker 1: age of eighty eight, shows no signs of slowing down.
Speaker 1: Legendary French chef Jacques Pepin Chef Pepin has enjoyed, by
Speaker 1: all accounts, a most extraordinary life and career. By twenty two,
Speaker 1: he was the personal chef for French President Chaules de gaul.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty nine, he immigrated to America and worked
Speaker 1: at Le Pavillon, the best French restaurant in New York City,
Speaker 1: before moving to Howard Johnson's. His next frontier was the
Speaker 1: American home, instructing audiences on proper French cooking methods. This
Speaker 1: began with his cookbooks, including the groundbreaking La Techiechnique, and
Speaker 1: then through multiple PBS series like Today's Gourmet and Cooking
Speaker 1: at Home. Here, Chef Papin taught the home chef both
Speaker 1: the basics for everyday meals and experimentation with gourmet flourishes.
Speaker 1: His most recent cookbook is called Jacques Papine cooking my
Speaker 1: way recipes and techniques for economical cooking. I wanted to
Speaker 1: know how growing up in a small town in France
Speaker 1: with his mother working in restaurants put him on the
Speaker 1: path to where he is today.
Speaker 2: Where we were in the film country, we had a
Speaker 2: little restaurant just outside of Lyons. The life was quite different.
Speaker 2: I mean, I tell Nady eight yesterday, so I'm thinking
Speaker 2: about over eighty years ago. Life was relatively easy. My
Speaker 2: father with a cabinet maker, my mother with a cook.
Speaker 2: So my choice in life was I'm a cavenet maker,
Speaker 2: I'm a cook, within the telephone, within the radio revision
Speaker 2: of course, any of this. So life was probably much
Speaker 2: easier for kid than he is now. And we took
Speaker 2: the dog, my brother and I go into the forest
Speaker 2: and all that on all day off and the parents
Speaker 2: never you know, we came back at night and no one.
Speaker 3: Worried about where you were. It was. It was quite
Speaker 3: different than now.
Speaker 1: Did your father take his cabinet making practice out into
Speaker 1: the country with you just outside of the or did
Speaker 1: he stay in the city and makers products.
Speaker 2: No, he did that in the country, but after he
Speaker 2: gave up anyway at some point to work in the
Speaker 2: restaurant with my mother. But my father was a cabinet maker.
Speaker 2: His father was his brother was what we could in
Speaker 2: France ebonist from the world ebony. So it's fancy cabinet maker.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: He used noble wood like cherries, oak and so forth.
Speaker 2: Never use any nail. It's alas you know, curt and
Speaker 2: joint and glue and a sculpture on the wood to
Speaker 2: that type of work. And the wely the sixteen with
Speaker 2: seventeen kind of furniture. I should have a couple of
Speaker 2: peace from him actually in my house.
Speaker 1: Now, your mother got into the restaurant business when you
Speaker 1: were how old?
Speaker 2: Well after I was born, because I have exactly twenty
Speaker 2: years different with my mother. I mean she got married
Speaker 2: I think she was seventeen and a half. Then at
Speaker 2: my brother with a year and a half older than
Speaker 2: me than me and another one. So she got into
Speaker 2: the restaurant business before the war. Slightly before the war.
Speaker 2: She was a waddressed working different restaurants self, helping in
Speaker 2: the kitchen. It was pretty common in France, I mean
Speaker 2: in the family. In France, I come twelve restaurant, twelve
Speaker 2: of them run by women. My two aunts and sister
Speaker 2: in law, cousin, a niece, a mother, they all had.
Speaker 2: I was actually the first male to go into that business.
Speaker 2: And those kind of a formidable women who were not
Speaker 2: very empressed by me. I remember when I was the
Speaker 2: chef to the president in France. Go back down to
Speaker 2: Leon Goo to my aunt at a little restaurant. I
Speaker 2: get into the kitchen. She drove me out. She said,
Speaker 2: you used too much. Better get out of here. They
Speaker 2: were not very unpressed by me.
Speaker 1: And who's managing all this enterprise? Your mother?
Speaker 2: Oh, they didn't have twelve restaurants at the time. I'm
Speaker 2: calling you general. And my aunt at a restaurant in book,
Speaker 2: another aunt at a restaurant somewhere else, my mother at
Speaker 2: three four restaurants actually at some point.
Speaker 1: And what was it about? I mean, so, I'm assuming
Speaker 1: you feel like you were born to this. There's no
Speaker 1: way you could escape. And you said cabin making or cooking, right,
Speaker 1: But you found the kitchen more seductive.
Speaker 2: Correct, absolutely more exciting or seductive, And so I went
Speaker 2: into this. I mean now, I said, the choice was
Speaker 2: relatively easy for kid at that point. And first we
Speaker 2: were supposed to go to school in teenage fourteen, which
Speaker 2: I did at thirteen, and I took all the exam
Speaker 2: you know at the end of primary school, the front exam.
Speaker 2: So I took all of those and I finished when
Speaker 2: I was early thirteen. So I say that's it. I'm
Speaker 2: going into a frightdiceship. My older brother became an engineer,
Speaker 2: so it worked, you know, so it was not a
Speaker 2: question of me that I had to go to work.
Speaker 3: That's what I wanted to do, so and I went
Speaker 3: to school later.
Speaker 1: So do you think that people, I mean, there's next
Speaker 1: to no association between what I do for a living
Speaker 1: and what you do for a living. But in the
Speaker 1: world of acting in theater and so forth, people will
Speaker 1: often say, I can't make you a good actor, but
Speaker 1: I can make you a better actor than you were
Speaker 1: when you walked in the door. But there needs to
Speaker 1: be some inherent inspiration. That is that thing true about
Speaker 1: food and cooking? Do people have to have an inherent
Speaker 1: gift for that kind of thing?
Speaker 3: Yes, certainly.
Speaker 2: I mean for me, I'm talking about professionalism, professional chef
Speaker 2: and on a professional chef. I did those book called
Speaker 2: a Technique, which is an illustrated manut of cooking technique
Speaker 2: to know to bon out. You can to poach an
Speaker 2: egg and it's not a question of knowing how to
Speaker 2: do it. It's eleven o'clock and you have one hundred
Speaker 2: people sitting down for lunch.
Speaker 3: You really have to move. So this is the difference
Speaker 3: between a professional chef and a home cook.
Speaker 2: You know, the speed and all that too. So you
Speaker 2: have to be a good technician to be a chef first.
Speaker 2: But I know a fair amount of a chef who
Speaker 2: a good technician, run a good kitchen and are relatively
Speaker 2: lousy cook. The food is all right. But conversely, I
Speaker 2: know people who cook at home who wouldn't be able
Speaker 2: to run a restaurant speed and all that, but food
Speaker 2: is fantastic, great, you know. So to be a great
Speaker 2: chef like Tomas Keller or Daniel Buru, well you have
Speaker 2: to be a technician first, but then you have to
Speaker 2: have other things after. You know, you have to have
Speaker 2: imagination talent to bring it to another level.
Speaker 1: You know. I think eventually you moved to Paris, yes,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to quote the number here because
Speaker 1: I find this fantastic. You work in many, many, many
Speaker 1: restaurants during that period, correct.
Speaker 3: Close to one hundred how is that possible?
Speaker 2: Its possible because I work at the Plaza and in
Speaker 2: Paris for like seven years, put my day off.
Speaker 3: Each day off, I work at.
Speaker 2: A different restaurant most of the time, and that two
Speaker 2: days off a week. There is an organization called associated
Speaker 2: the Quasi Society of the Chef of Paris, which I
Speaker 2: will a member. In fact, I don't know why we
Speaker 2: don't have that in New York. But you go in
Speaker 2: the morning or someone your cook doesn't come or whatever
Speaker 2: doesn't come, they call they say I need one cook
Speaker 2: for the day. So you know I will end up
Speaker 2: like at Messi, you know, Galley la Fayette to and
Speaker 2: do like three thousand plates with a slice, a piece
Speaker 2: of salad in between an egg, you know. And the
Speaker 2: next time I end up in a two star restaurant
Speaker 2: and next so you never know where the society is
Speaker 2: going to sign you. But that was great experience, you know,
Speaker 2: of working because in case like this, it's not like
Speaker 2: you have to wait for the day to learn the
Speaker 2: habit of the house. I mean, within fifteen minutes you're there,
Speaker 2: the chef say you got to work.
Speaker 3: So it's great training.
Speaker 1: So you have a job in one where you were
Speaker 1: at tattanay. Oh, yes, and you have a job. But
Speaker 1: it sounds you sound like we've had guests on the
Speaker 1: show who were some of the most legendary sessions musicians
Speaker 1: in history, right, and it sounds like you have the
Speaker 1: same kind of thing you're you're going to go in
Speaker 1: for a day and and is the culture there, I
Speaker 1: don't want to say uniform, but approachable where you can
Speaker 1: walk in and you're just accepted you walk in there
Speaker 1: or do you see the other conflicts with the way
Speaker 1: things are done?
Speaker 2: Sometimes No, No, if you work on a job to
Speaker 2: stay for a couple of years, you may get involving
Speaker 2: into that type of thing. But when you work for
Speaker 2: the day two days, no, And remember that at the time,
Speaker 2: the cook was really at the bottom of the social scale.
Speaker 2: Any good mother, I wanted a child to marry the lawyer,
Speaker 2: you know, a doctor, certainly not a cook. So now
Speaker 2: we are genius. I don't know what happened at that time.
Speaker 2: It wasn't okay. So when you went into a restaurant,
Speaker 2: it was to conform exactly to the habit of that reason.
Speaker 2: It was not to create or do something on your own.
Speaker 2: In fact, I don't think I ever used a recipe
Speaker 2: before I came to America. So you work in that place,
Speaker 2: you learn the taste of that, and those dishes in
Speaker 2: a sense become very visceral, very powerful. I mean the
Speaker 2: dishes my mother did as a kid. You know, those
Speaker 2: states will stay with you the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: And I'll go the pleasure. And in Paris, for example,
Speaker 2: we did the lobster soufle. We were a forty eight
Speaker 2: chef in the kitchen there, and the forty eight of
Speaker 2: us could have done it, you would never have known
Speaker 2: who has done it.
Speaker 3: That's was the way it was.
Speaker 2: Until Nouvelle Cuisine in the mid eighteen ninety when the
Speaker 2: chef started creating and doing that type of thing, which different.
Speaker 1: Now now you're a hired chef for the president of France,
Speaker 1: right and you work with the gall and some other
Speaker 1: heads of state. How long were you doing that job?
Speaker 2: From fifty six and fifty six to fifty eight and
Speaker 2: the fifty eight I came here at the end of
Speaker 2: fifty nine, you know, so you have to realize that
Speaker 2: at the time. Again, as I said, the cook, I
Speaker 2: serve people like either know where Nehru Tito mcmilland over
Speaker 2: the head of state. Not anyone ever would call you
Speaker 2: to get kuru in the dining room.
Speaker 3: Are you kidding? The cook was in the kitchen. That
Speaker 3: was it.
Speaker 2: If anyone came into the kitchen because something was wrong
Speaker 2: towards two complaints. So I had never had an antio.
Speaker 2: Television barely existed, but with radio or magazzine newspaper that
Speaker 2: didn't exist.
Speaker 3: So it was a different world.
Speaker 1: So you're at what is certainly one of the summits
Speaker 1: of cooking in France. If you're cooking for the head
Speaker 1: of state. There you have this amazing job, and then
Speaker 1: when you're done in fifty eight, you moved to the
Speaker 1: United States.
Speaker 3: Correct, Right, at the end of nineteen fifteen, I moved.
Speaker 3: I wasn't married.
Speaker 2: At a great job in France, my brother at a restaurant,
Speaker 2: but I wanted to come to America.
Speaker 3: America.
Speaker 2: I was she leaves the Golden fleeceh. So I said,
Speaker 2: I want to go there for a year, two years,
Speaker 2: maybe learn the language a little bit, see what's going on.
Speaker 2: I was unattached to So I came here at the
Speaker 2: end of fifty nine and I'm still here.
Speaker 1: But you what you see up till then, before you
Speaker 1: settle in the United States, it's it's safe to say
Speaker 1: you have a very restless nature.
Speaker 2: Yes, has an extent, but that's what the world of
Speaker 2: food was in a center, restless, moving from one place
Speaker 2: to the other to learn because if you keep your
Speaker 2: eye open, I mean, I can't work with anyone now.
Speaker 2: And you learn something, you know you will never have
Speaker 2: sort of doing it this way too. Sometimes you learn
Speaker 2: what not to do, but you learn something. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so in that sense, coming to America was different. It
Speaker 2: was the first time I work at the Pavio in
Speaker 2: New York, was considered, you know, the best restaurant here.
Speaker 2: And it was the first time that I did my
Speaker 2: day in one in one shift. In France, we still
Speaker 2: did two shift. I start nine o'clock in the morning
Speaker 2: until two o'clock in the afternoon. You're from from two
Speaker 2: to five, go sit down, sod where and at five
Speaker 2: you start five to nine or ten. But was standard,
Speaker 2: you know, so here I started doing it was one shift.
Speaker 2: I saw it was like half a day of working.
Speaker 2: That's where I started going to school and did other things.
Speaker 2: I had plenty of time and the people, I have
Speaker 2: to say, at the time were very, very welcoming. I
Speaker 2: mean they say, oh, you come from a great country.
Speaker 2: We have so much culture, you know. So I said, wow.
Speaker 2: I talked to the people in France I left. They said,
Speaker 2: what are you doing? They don't even have bread. There
Speaker 2: would have wine free, you know at the time. But yeah,
Speaker 2: people were extremely welcoming here. So I loved this. Things
Speaker 2: went on, one thing after another, and I'm still here.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, you come here and you have
Speaker 1: pavion for how long.
Speaker 2: I w a the paveo not too long, from September
Speaker 2: until next April six seven months. At that time there
Speaker 2: was a problem with Suley, the owner, and all kind
Speaker 2: of problem with them. Pierre Frede who was the executive
Speaker 2: chef and the outcome with Suley in nineteen thirty nine
Speaker 2: for the Worldfare at a Young Coming and he stayed there.
Speaker 2: Eventually he was the executive chef when I was there,
Speaker 2: a problem with Soule and he decided to leave. And coincidentally,
Speaker 2: at that time, Howard Johnson, Howard D. Johnson, who created
Speaker 2: Howard Johnson whether regular patron of the Pavilon. So he
Speaker 2: I ad Pierre and Pierre told me you want to
Speaker 2: come with me? And I said Okay, great ideas. So
Speaker 2: that's that's what happens.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's stop there because this is the term that
Speaker 1: this is so amazing to me. So you hit the
Speaker 1: summit in France, you're cooking for the heads of state.
Speaker 1: You come to New York, you're a Pavinon in New York,
Speaker 1: and the Howard Johnson, the namesake of the business, comes
Speaker 1: to Pavinon. Is he a regular? Yes?
Speaker 3: Regular?
Speaker 1: Okay, so he's a regular there and he gets you
Speaker 1: to come and cook for the Howard Johnson's restaurant chain. Correct, Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: How the hell did he do that? How did he
Speaker 1: get you to come?
Speaker 2: No, he actually asked Pierre to come, and Pierre decided
Speaker 2: to go, and Pierre told me, you want to come
Speaker 2: with me to assist me and do and that's how
Speaker 2: I did. But the point is that, as I said,
Speaker 2: the cook was quite different than now, because on that
Speaker 2: spring of nineteen sixty, I actually I would have felt
Speaker 2: the job at the White House for Kennedy and then
Speaker 2: but I had done that, as I said, in France,
Speaker 2: I had never been on a magazine newspaper, so I
Speaker 2: had no idea of the potential for publicity too, because
Speaker 2: it really did not exist. In fact, the one who
Speaker 2: went to the White House with a front of mine
Speaker 2: who was the sou chef at the six House in
Speaker 2: New York, and I called him, put them in touch,
Speaker 2: eventually got the job, and a year later he sent
Speaker 2: me a picture of him with President Kennedy or missus
Speaker 2: carry as Wow. I never had a picture with the
Speaker 2: goal of So it was already changing a different world.
Speaker 2: But prior to him, who was a chef at the
Speaker 2: White House?
Speaker 3: I asked?
Speaker 2: And it ended up knowing that it was a black
Speaker 2: lady from the South somewhere. No one would have known
Speaker 2: her name, no more than the my name or whatever.
Speaker 2: So it was a different world. We have to look
Speaker 2: at it in that context. And Haward Johnson, what another
Speaker 2: world for me? American eating, American habit.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what I want to ask you, which is
Speaker 1: when you come here, yeah again, Head of State France Pavillon,
Speaker 1: you get offer the White House job. What's the first
Speaker 1: thing you're in New York? Correct? You settled in New York. First,
Speaker 1: what's the first thing that strikes you about the way
Speaker 1: Americans eat in American restaurants?
Speaker 2: Well, I live on fiftieth between first and second avenue
Speaker 2: on top of a little restaurant called Lettock Blanche near
Speaker 2: a certain.
Speaker 3: Place for a very nice area. So they are a
Speaker 3: superhil market, which happened my first SUPERI market. I thought
Speaker 3: it was great. I didn't have to go to the.
Speaker 2: Fish guide, the vegetable guide and so forth. But then
Speaker 2: there was a lot of package package package. Then there
Speaker 2: was some good meat, beef, lamb lobster, but there was
Speaker 2: only one salad that was iceberg. There was no leak,
Speaker 2: no shallow, no intel visible. I remember saying, what are
Speaker 2: the mercioms. Let's say Aisle five that was ken mushroom
Speaker 2: there you didn't have any. So it was undo the world,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of course had the pavillon. We
Speaker 2: had great supplier even from Europe, from different parts or
Speaker 2: the fish and all that too.
Speaker 3: But yes, it certainly it was different.
Speaker 1: So in France it's very compartmentalized. You go to the
Speaker 1: fish market, you go to the butcher, you go to
Speaker 1: the vegetable. It's all separate, the bakery, everything is separate. Now,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can only say this because it's true,
Speaker 1: and that is that for me, Howard Johnson's occupied a
Speaker 1: very specific place because as a Catholic in the sixties.
Speaker 1: As a child, we couldn't eat meat on Friday, so
Speaker 1: the Howard Johnson's fish fry on Fridays was a staple
Speaker 1: in my house. Going to have the cost law and
Speaker 1: the hush puppies and the corn or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: and you know, fried clams. But Howard Johnson's for the
Speaker 1: guy that's a restless guy, for the guy that's moving
Speaker 1: around and trying things. You stayed with Howard Johnson's for
Speaker 1: ten years, is that correct?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 2: Well, to start with how Old Johnson, the father came
Speaker 2: to my wedding, He came to the christening of my daughter.
Speaker 2: So they were used to come to the commissary and
Speaker 2: Pierre fred and he said, okay, you guys do whatever
Speaker 2: you want to. We start changing butter instead of margarine
Speaker 2: fresh and uness and the hydrated onion. We start changing
Speaker 2: all the recipe and start working in the kitchen with
Speaker 2: four four chicken to do a chicken pot pie, and
Speaker 2: we end up with three thousand pound of chicken at
Speaker 2: the time. You know, I move on on the in
Speaker 2: thousand gallon kettles. So it was the last production, you know,
Speaker 2: when I finished Howard Johnson I opened a restaurant on
Speaker 2: Fifth Avenue, cool a potagerie in New York. We sell
Speaker 2: only soup, and I were a consult time for the
Speaker 2: World Trade Center for Joe Baum. We saved one hundred
Speaker 2: thirty thousand people a day about a consultant at the
Speaker 2: Russian teeroom. I'm saying only that because other French chefs,
Speaker 2: I would never have been able to do any of
Speaker 2: those jobs. I didn't do anything about production, marketing, chemistory
Speaker 2: of food. So Howard Johnson was a good experience for me.
Speaker 3: I learned a lot.
Speaker 1: The book is the technique. So the technique is as
Speaker 1: important to you as the artistry preparing food in a
Speaker 1: certain way. Because you've mentioned repeatedly in interviews programs of
Speaker 1: yours and then your writing about your mindfulness about economics
Speaker 1: in cooking. Yeah, don't waste anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, economic of motion as well as economic of food
Speaker 3: and so forth.
Speaker 2: And the technique. I publish that technique. I think it's
Speaker 2: seventy four or five. It's still in print. I don't
Speaker 2: cook the same way that I cook fifty years ago
Speaker 2: or two, but the way you shop on a knife,
Speaker 2: you know. Peter n Asparagoz Porch and egg is the
Speaker 2: same way. So those books of technique kind of remain
Speaker 2: because of that.
Speaker 1: Chef Jacques Pepin. If you enjoy in depth culinary conversations,
Speaker 1: check out my episode with Chef Eric Repair of the
Speaker 1: legendary Le Bernadelle.
Speaker 5: What I like about Europe is the quality of the products.
Speaker 5: When they serve vegetables, they test like what you're supposed
Speaker 5: to taste. Here's a bit of a challenge because we
Speaker 5: do not cultivate the same way.
Speaker 3: You know, like the soil is maybe not the same.
Speaker 5: I don't know, Like an artichock in a Mediterranean is
Speaker 5: not the same artichock that we eat here.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's like those.
Speaker 5: Gigantic farms, and they have ways of cultivating and maximizing
Speaker 5: the land and factory its factories the artichoks are grown.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Eric Repair, go
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Jacques
Speaker 1: Pepette tells us where a world famous chef dines in
Speaker 1: his downtime. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing Jacques Pepin's culinary techniques every day cooking and
Speaker 1: heart and soul in the kitchen. These are just a
Speaker 1: few of the many television programs Papin has created to
Speaker 1: instruct the home chef. But of all his work as
Speaker 1: a television icon, one series he is most well known
Speaker 1: for is his Emmy winning show with Julia Child Julia
Speaker 1: and Jacques Cooking at Home.
Speaker 2: When I did a theory with Julia Child, you know
Speaker 2: we did. I knew her fifty years. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: married in nineteen sixty, so we did the theory together.
Speaker 2: We had no recipe. She said, what do you want
Speaker 2: to do? Just right down one hundred things of you
Speaker 2: want to do with the twenty six show, and she
Speaker 2: did the same way, and I think three of mine
Speaker 2: made it in the In the show. You know, we
Speaker 2: cook together without recipes, so it was harder for the cameraman.
Speaker 2: Of course they don't know whether we're going to left
Speaker 2: right or whatever. But for me, I have a scallion
Speaker 2: in that dish because they happened to be on the table,
Speaker 2: so I throw them in much ideo to work without recipe,
Speaker 2: just testing, adjusting this. And the second thing when we
Speaker 2: did our show, of course on PBS, you have a
Speaker 2: time frame the show thirty minute all the time. It's
Speaker 2: too expensive but Julia said, we'll cook and when it finished,
Speaker 2: will tell you some of the show.
Speaker 3: For eighty minutes nineteen minute.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was amazing. And then so we had wine.
Speaker 2: We had good wine, we had no recipe, and we
Speaker 2: had as much time as we wanted.
Speaker 3: So it was fun cooking.
Speaker 1: I watched that documentary about her, and I was enthralled
Speaker 1: by that film. It really was a magical an opportunity
Speaker 1: to really get to know somebody you thought you knew. Yes,
Speaker 1: a woman who everybody in this country knew who she was,
Speaker 1: I mean at least of my generation, but you really
Speaker 1: didn't know her when you got to know her. It
Speaker 1: was really really a wonderful film.
Speaker 3: But she was exactly the same way in person that
Speaker 3: she was on television.
Speaker 1: Now, so when you're in the United States, when you
Speaker 1: come here and before you go to Pavion and the
Speaker 1: speaks to also just your patterns throughout your life, whether
Speaker 1: you're in Europe or what have you. Do you like
Speaker 1: to go to restaurants? Do you enjoy eating out or
Speaker 1: do you much more prefer to just cook at home.
Speaker 1: Do you dine out with any regularity or you prefer
Speaker 1: not to both?
Speaker 2: I mean, I love to cook at home with Fran
Speaker 2: occasionally we did last night, but otherwise I love to
Speaker 2: go to restaurant. Of course, I mean usually pretty straightforward restaurant.
Speaker 2: For example, for America and in the psyche of American
Speaker 2: I believe a lot French cooking is understood in the
Speaker 2: context of Michelin Star. You know, well, there is twelve
Speaker 2: I think twelve or fourteen three star Michline in France,
Speaker 2: with about seventy eighty two star at about four hundred
Speaker 2: one star, the whole star system of the Mischtin at
Speaker 2: about six hundred restaurant, where there is one hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty eight thousand restaurants in France. All the restaurant that
Speaker 2: I was thinking about my mother to any of them,
Speaker 2: mud never be in a three star restaurant in the
Speaker 2: Meshline guide. I'm saying that because in the psyche of
Speaker 2: the American people often they look at French cooking in
Speaker 2: the context of michelan very elegant and famous high stakes timing,
Speaker 2: which is not really it's part of it, but a
Speaker 2: small part to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: Now, for you, when you dine out, what's the first
Speaker 1: thing that you look for in a restaurant? That you
Speaker 1: find attractive well to.
Speaker 2: A certain extent, the service. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 2: get into a restaurant, or you're on the road, you
Speaker 2: get into a restaurant, you go in just looking at
Speaker 2: the bottom of the chair or the table, whether they
Speaker 2: are clean or not, the smell of the restaurants and
Speaker 2: all that. I said, I'm staying or I'm not saying here,
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about famous restaurants. So there is that
Speaker 2: first impression which is very important, and the way you
Speaker 2: received the service to Yeah, those first impressions are very important,
Speaker 2: I think in the restaurant. I mean I used to
Speaker 2: review a fair amount of restaurant with Craig label on
Speaker 2: the New York Times because I knew Craig again when
Speaker 2: I came to this country, I mean through the pavilion again,
Speaker 2: so very often to touch job that I would not,
Speaker 2: in fact, I was broke with the job after he
Speaker 2: left and died. I mean that they would you be interested.
Speaker 2: I couldn't do that. I mean, it's very easy. I
Speaker 2: can't tell you fifteen things wrong anywhere that you go,
Speaker 2: but this is not my type of things. And after
Speaker 2: I know I would have been pretty bored and frustrated.
Speaker 2: After you know, a couple of weeks on the job.
Speaker 1: Well, for me, my wife and I we go out
Speaker 1: to dinner probably you know, four nights a week because
Speaker 1: it's the only time I have my wife to myself, right,
Speaker 1: we have to put all the kids to bed and
Speaker 1: I go to dinner with my wife. And my feeling
Speaker 1: about restaurants is, you know, we basically try new things
Speaker 1: every now and then someone will say, oh, you must
Speaker 1: go here, but we go to the same four places
Speaker 1: over and over again. I'm want reliability. I walk in
Speaker 1: that restaurant, I know exactly what I'm going to get.
Speaker 2: Right, me too, if I played with it to a
Speaker 2: fantastic roast ch I want to go back there. And
Speaker 2: if I go back there and they say, we don't
Speaker 2: do it anyway, So what's going on?
Speaker 3: I mean?
Speaker 2: You know, I add, you know, so many twenty three,
Speaker 2: twenty four thousand restaurants in New York, the amount of
Speaker 2: ethnicity and the choices unmatched anywhere in the world. When
Speaker 2: you find six or eight restaurant that you can rely
Speaker 2: on if you want Chinese, all this and that, yeah,
Speaker 2: of course you go back there.
Speaker 3: That's what you want, and you want the same food.
Speaker 1: Now are there things you won't eat or did your
Speaker 1: training put you in a place where you eat anything?
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm a glutton basically. Yeah, I eat anything you
Speaker 2: put in front of me. Really, yes, I mean I
Speaker 2: don't really think of anything that I don't like. It changed,
Speaker 2: I mean your metabolism change.
Speaker 3: At my age, I used to love a large stake.
Speaker 2: Now if I have a stick, if I have two
Speaker 2: or three answers a piece of that, that's more than enough. So,
Speaker 2: you know, things change. I eat probably more soup than
Speaker 2: I ever did, and other things like that. The way
Speaker 2: you cook when you're young, chef of and you add
Speaker 2: to the plate, You add to the plate. You add
Speaker 2: to the plate too, presentation too. And when you get
Speaker 2: to be a certain age, if I have a great
Speaker 2: tomato out of my gardener, the right temperature, you know,
Speaker 2: a bit of salt, it's ripe, A bit of salt,
Speaker 2: bit of a river on top, I don't need more
Speaker 2: embellishment on the plate. So I take away, take away
Speaker 2: from the plate to be left with something more essential.
Speaker 2: Not my age, but it's a normal progression with age
Speaker 2: and so forth.
Speaker 1: I mean beyond. I want to say this carefully because
Speaker 1: I don't want to get this say the wrong thing here.
Speaker 1: But it's like, beyond drugs and alcohol and things that
Speaker 1: have a grip on people in this very very powerful way,
Speaker 1: beyond that, there's nothing that has a control of people
Speaker 1: more than food. Oh yeah, food is the most powerful
Speaker 1: reality in our lives.
Speaker 3: There is nothing also we bring people together like food.
Speaker 2: You know, you sit down at the table with people
Speaker 2: you don't know to all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 2: you started in conversation and all that. You may be
Speaker 2: sitting next to the governor on one side and maybe
Speaker 2: the dishwasher of the restaurant on the other side. But
Speaker 2: if really it doesn't matter. I remember traveling in the
Speaker 2: northern of Europe, Yugoslavia and so forth. In little village
Speaker 2: many many years ago, people look behind the curtain foreigners,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, you're dangerous. You see it at
Speaker 2: the bistro and you're there by hand.
Speaker 3: If you don't know the language.
Speaker 2: You get the bottle of wine there and whatever bred
Speaker 2: to and all of a sudden people sit around you.
Speaker 3: You know, they look at you.
Speaker 2: You send them a bottle of wine, and an hour
Speaker 2: later you're speaking unknown language with those people. Because you'll
Speaker 2: quote normal you know, you eat like them or so forth.
Speaker 2: So food is very important. One of the most important
Speaker 2: thing for me is probably to follow the season.
Speaker 3: You know, I mean the.
Speaker 2: Supo markets seem to be greater and more beautiful they
Speaker 2: have ever been. You have through very year round, but
Speaker 2: when you test it, and when you go to a
Speaker 2: farm by a basket of srowary in full season, you
Speaker 2: can the difference. So it seemed to be very plentiful
Speaker 2: in some ways, but it's not. I mean, following the
Speaker 2: season the best thing you can do. That's when a
Speaker 2: tomato really tastes good full season, that's when it's really
Speaker 2: cheap too, and when when nutritionally that's when it the
Speaker 2: best for you. So you know, you go to those
Speaker 2: places from the south of France to Sicily or Sardinia
Speaker 2: where people live over one hundred years old, they eat
Speaker 2: very simply, but they follow the season simply, have a
Speaker 2: glass of wine and eat you know what's in seasons simply,
Speaker 2: and that's great.
Speaker 1: We had Eric Repair obviously from the Bernadette here on
Speaker 1: the show about a year ago, and when he described
Speaker 1: what it was like when he was young and he
Speaker 1: was in the kitchen, it's a lot of work, boy,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it was really, really, really a lot
Speaker 1: of work.
Speaker 2: It was, but we didn't know it was work, you know.
Speaker 2: And as I said at that time, no recipe. The
Speaker 2: chef that you do this, and if you say why,
Speaker 2: you would have said because I just told you, right.
Speaker 2: So I work for a year in apprenticeship cleaning the floor,
Speaker 2: and then started scaling fish, killing chicken at the time
Speaker 2: we killed chicken, plog chicken rabbits, scaling fish too, without
Speaker 2: just by looking and doing it. And then when the
Speaker 2: earlier the chef told me you started the stove tomorrow
Speaker 2: started the stove.
Speaker 3: They only close to the stuff to.
Speaker 2: Put wood and calling it at that when it was
Speaker 2: now and I work at the stove and I knew
Speaker 2: how to do it through osmosis, you know, at that time,
Speaker 2: the repeat and so forth.
Speaker 3: So that was a different way of learning as we
Speaker 3: do now.
Speaker 2: You know, I've been dinner at the French Culinarian Stitute
Speaker 2: in New York for twenty five years. That I teach
Speaker 2: at BU for forty three years, I think, So now
Speaker 2: you teach totally differently. The key first are usually coming
Speaker 2: from not only our school but offan college, so they
Speaker 2: want to know more totally different than the way I
Speaker 2: was told when I was thirteen fourteen, do this, do
Speaker 2: that that said?
Speaker 1: You know, going back to when you were talking about
Speaker 1: a great tomato. What you see is I live on
Speaker 1: Long Island in the summer. We're out there for the summer,
Speaker 1: my family, and these farmers' markets where it seems like
Speaker 1: people will pay just about anything to have a basket
Speaker 1: of something of the season. We have a garden in
Speaker 1: our house. We have a woman who comes. She prepares
Speaker 1: the garden, and then she texts me and says, here's
Speaker 1: what's ready to pick. The Japanese egg plant is ready
Speaker 1: to pick, the flowers are ready to pick. We're going
Speaker 1: a decent sized garden. And my family I got, like
Speaker 1: I said, I got seven kids, my wife, and I
Speaker 1: of some people who help us. We can't eat everything
Speaker 1: that comes out of that garden.
Speaker 2: I did two soup this summer with cucumber. It's almost
Speaker 2: I put it, took the seat out of it, put
Speaker 2: it in the food processor and rucifi it salt paper
Speaker 2: and I mixed that with a bloody marry mix there
Speaker 2: is I had a guess patio right there, and I
Speaker 2: did another one the same way, but then mix it
Speaker 2: with the with yogurt and mint to do yogot soup
Speaker 2: during the summer. So often the recipe come from that
Speaker 2: overabundance of the things that you have.
Speaker 1: Chef Jacques Papa, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a
Speaker 1: friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Jacques papass shares how a near
Speaker 1: fatal car accident changed the course of his life. I'm
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Chef
Speaker 1: Jacques Papa's career boasts a seemingly endless list of accomplishments,
Speaker 1: from cooking for multiple heads of state to creating the
Speaker 1: culinary certificate program at Boston University. That's why I wanted
Speaker 1: to know why he chose to go back to school,
Speaker 1: earning his bachelor's and master's degrees from Columbia University in
Speaker 1: his adulthood.
Speaker 3: Where to start with?
Speaker 2: At skurlun I was thirteen years old, so there was
Speaker 2: always often in the kitchen that complex about not having
Speaker 2: an education, you know, and all that. So I saw
Speaker 2: that even as I said, when I was at Howard
Speaker 2: john for example, I was with Pia Fredde. Pierre Frede
Speaker 2: was a fantastic chef, great guy. He started working like
Speaker 2: I did. But he never went back to college after
Speaker 2: he was here. And I remember mister Johnson junior there,
Speaker 2: who was at Cornell. He used to come with his
Speaker 2: other kid, the sandwiched two twenty three, they come out
Speaker 2: of college, and I know that Pierre was ampressed. He
Speaker 2: didn't know what to do, when in fact they knew
Speaker 2: nothing about cooking or anything.
Speaker 3: At that time.
Speaker 2: I was already in the graduate school at Columbia, so
Speaker 2: at one time pressed by them. So it changed your montality,
Speaker 2: you know. As I said, one time, I gave the
Speaker 2: commandment address at Columbia. Actually, and I said a quote
Speaker 2: I think from Somerset Mohan, which the education is very important.
Speaker 2: Without an education, you're likely to fall in the deadly
Speaker 2: danger of taking educated people seriously.
Speaker 3: So it's true to a certain next tent.
Speaker 2: You know, I would never have been able to do
Speaker 2: everything that I've done without the education I get at Columbia.
Speaker 2: And I went to Columbia from nineteen fifty nine to
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three. Seventy three appropoed a doctoral dissertation on
Speaker 2: a history of food in the context civil edition literature,
Speaker 2: and at that time on me, are you crazy?
Speaker 3: Food? Now we cannot accept that, so I left.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Actually I want to be you and you
Speaker 1: got your doctorate there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Columbia still gave me a PHG letter. I think
Speaker 2: it's another world, the world of food now, I mean
Speaker 2: the way we get respect and all that. And I
Speaker 2: have to say that American chefs start later than what
Speaker 2: it used to be thirteen years old in Europe and
Speaker 2: so forth, so they usually go to school today, are
Speaker 2: more educated too, so it's a different business.
Speaker 3: They get much more into business now.
Speaker 2: So many chefs that I know from Daniel Bulha six
Speaker 2: seven eight restaurants, I never did that type of thing.
Speaker 2: I don't think that I would have been very good
Speaker 2: at that. I'm not very good at business in general.
Speaker 2: So but the chef now is that much more larger
Speaker 2: person than it.
Speaker 3: Used to be.
Speaker 1: So a couple of quick things that I want to
Speaker 1: touch on. So you were in a very serious car accident, yes,
Speaker 1: and this was back in.
Speaker 3: What year, nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2: You know, I tried to avoid idea of falling arriving tree,
Speaker 2: and I had twelve fourteen fractureing and so I broke
Speaker 2: my back in three places, my two hip leg arm.
Speaker 2: They thought that I would live, They thought that I
Speaker 2: would walk again. And in fact, one of the first
Speaker 2: things my wife signed removal of the left town. The
Speaker 2: left town there was only this is a good thing.
Speaker 2: They didn't cut it off. So yeah, that kind of
Speaker 2: changed my life too. It pushed me in the direction
Speaker 2: of writing about food. You know I did for the
Speaker 2: New York Times.
Speaker 1: You couldn't stand in the kitchen for very long.
Speaker 2: Obviously, Well I can, but you know, not like back then,
Speaker 2: all the time, every day, six hours.
Speaker 3: It's pretty taxing, you know, So of course, yeah, so
Speaker 3: that changed.
Speaker 1: Changed your life in an important way. I want you
Speaker 1: to mention two things. Your new cookbook is called.
Speaker 3: What Cooking by Way?
Speaker 1: I think you know.
Speaker 2: I did thirteenth SERI of PBS show, and each time
Speaker 2: there is a theme. So each time you have a
Speaker 2: book with a different theme. And that's what I have
Speaker 2: so many books. I even did a book for the
Speaker 2: Cleveland Clinic for caliac vasion wet loss. So you put
Speaker 2: your knowledge of food to a very specific area in
Speaker 2: the New York Time for eight ten years that I
Speaker 2: had a column called The Purposeful Cook, which was to
Speaker 2: cook for a family of six from a minimum amount
Speaker 2: of money. So there the idea was economy in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: So this is a bit of the same theme that
Speaker 2: I took back here. But I've been very lucky with
Speaker 2: all of the books that I've done, and with PBS
Speaker 2: and so forth.
Speaker 1: So you had an amazingly broad career. It's incredible.
Speaker 3: I'm very lucky.
Speaker 4: Which brings me to you said, you just turned eighty eight. Yeah, yesterday,
Speaker 4: So yesterday was your birthday, your eighty eight. Which I
Speaker 4: have many friends, many friends who are older than I am.
Speaker 4: I'm sixty five, and my friends who were in their
Speaker 4: late seventies around in the corner toward eighty, who have
Speaker 4: great careers.
Speaker 1: They're like, they're never going to retire. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: this is who I am, this is what I do.
Speaker 1: Retirement it's death.
Speaker 3: If you love what you're doing, you never have to
Speaker 3: go to work.
Speaker 1: Fantastic, fantastic. Now, one more thing. Your foundation. Describe to
Speaker 1: us when you started that what the mission of the
Speaker 1: foundation is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was actually my son in law, my daughter
Speaker 2: does Facebook for me. My son in law does instide
Speaker 2: gramble of though it a professor Johnson and weel it's
Speaker 2: actually a professional chef forty years but then he went
Speaker 2: back to Johnson and Weell to teach and get his
Speaker 2: master and get a PhD. So at some point that
Speaker 2: was five six years ago, he told me, you know,
Speaker 2: you've been teaching all your life.
Speaker 3: Who do you think you would like to teach now?
Speaker 3: So we talked about it.
Speaker 2: I say, you know people who have been a bit
Speaker 2: these enfranchised by life. You know, people who come out
Speaker 2: of jail, you know, homeless people form a drug addict,
Speaker 2: even veteran. So I feel that in six weeks, with
Speaker 2: the video that we are teaching and all that, in
Speaker 2: six weeks, I could teach someone in the kitchen, if
Speaker 2: they're interested, how to pier on your properly, or to
Speaker 2: pilas Viargus how to.
Speaker 3: Push on egg.
Speaker 2: And then you know the basic and if you like
Speaker 2: it and keep at it, Fabio, there may be other
Speaker 2: chef there. You know, you're in charge now at the kitchen,
Speaker 2: and you make good money and it kind of redo
Speaker 2: your life. So they are not necessarily young people in
Speaker 2: the organization. You know, a lot of forty fifty people.
Speaker 2: But we work through community kitchen a bit all over
Speaker 2: the country and it's been quite rewarding and we need.
Speaker 3: People like that in the kitchen, you know, to work.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Well, I must say what a great honor
Speaker 1: it is for me to meet you. It is an honor.
Speaker 1: I'm a great admirer of yours.
Speaker 3: A great honor for me. I wanted to tell you.
Speaker 3: I have to say. Yeah.
Speaker 2: My daughter and my son in law and my granddaughter,
Speaker 2: they love you. Thank you, sir, thank you, happy cooking.
Speaker 1: My thanks to Jacques Papin. More information about the Jacques
Speaker 1: Bepin Foundation can be found at jp dot Foundation. This
Speaker 1: episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Speaker 1: Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought
Speaker 1: to you by iHeart Radio.