Jacques Pépin: A Culinary Legend Reflects on 75 Years in Food

[00:00:00] Chris Spear: This is Chris Spear, and you're listening to Chefs Without Restaurants. Today's episode is a momentous one. It's our 250th episode, and it coincides with five years of incredible conversations with culinary entrepreneurs, chefs, and creators who are shaping the food and beverage industry outside of traditional restaurant settings.

[00:00:20] Chris Spear: I've recorded these shows live in both my garage and at my kitchen table. I've recorded them in an echoey brewery. I've had some mediocre Zoom sessions. And to the longtime followers, thanks for sticking with me. While I can't think of a better way to celebrate this milestone than with one of the most legendary figures in the culinary world, never in my dreams did I imagine that I would have a guest like I do today.

[00:00:45] Chris Spear: It's none other than Chef Jacques Pepin. Chef Pepin's career spans more than 7 decades, from apprenticing in French kitchens starting at age 13 to becoming a culinary icon known for his cookbooks, television shows, and contributions to food [00:01:00] education. We talk about everything, from his advice for young cooks to his thoughts on balancing tradition with emerging technology.

[00:01:08] Chris Spear: We also discuss his passion for teaching and the remarkable work being done through the Jacques Pépin Foundation. It was Chef Pépin's 90th birthday next year. The Jacques Pépin Foundation recently kicked off a year long nationwide fundraising campaign. The campaign will expand the Foundation's grant program, supporting community kitchens that provide free culinary and life skills training to those who've been disenfranchised from the workforce, and link participating restaurant chefs with local community kitchens.

[00:01:35] Chris Spear: Last year, I had Raleigh Wiesent on the podcast. He's the executive director of the Jacques Pepin Foundation and Chef Pepin's son in law. I've linked that episode in the show notes if you'd like a more in depth look at the Jacques Pepin Foundation. And this episode also marks the start of a short break for the show.

[00:01:52] Chris Spear: We'll be back in early 2025 with more great conversations. But in the meantime, you can stay connected with our community by going to [00:02:00] chefswithoutrestaurants. org or connect with me on Instagram and threads at chefswithoutrestaurants. And be on the lookout for my new podcast, Personal Chef Business Startup Guide, launching in January 2025.

[00:02:12] Chris Spear: And again, if you go to chefswithoutrestaurants. org, you can sign up for our mailing list and you will be notified when that new show starts. As always, thanks so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. Have a great week. Have a great holiday. And I hope to talk to you all soon. Hey, Chef. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:31] Chris Spear: Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. It's quite an honor to speak with someone of such high esteem and regard in the culinary industry. I look forward to, uh, to talking to you today. 

[00:02:43] Jacques Pepin: It's been a long time. 

[00:02:45] Chris Spear: It's been a long time. Um, you started your culinary career at 13. Is that right? Um, you decided that you had had enough and wanted to go start working at the ripe old age of 13.

[00:02:57] Jacques Pepin: Yes, somewhat, but I mean, my [00:03:00] mother had a restaurant, so, uh, that was in 1949 and went into apprenticeship, so, my father was a cabinetmaker, and my mother was a cook at a little restaurant. Um, we didn't have television, we didn't have radio, we didn't have the telephone even. So life was probably in a sense much easier than now.

[00:03:26] Jacques Pepin: My father was a cabinetmaker, my mother a cook, so I would be a cabinetmaker or a cook. I never thought that, oh, maybe I'll be a doctor or whatever. That didn't really exist. So in France at that time, We had to go to school until age 14, theoretically, that is at the end of a primary school. So at age 13, I took all of the exam, uh, for the primary school and I finished, took my exam and said, Okay, I'm going to work.

[00:03:53] Jacques Pepin: So I went into apprenticeship. 

[00:03:55] Chris Spear: Now, your mother was in food. Did you have a desire to do this? Like, had [00:04:00] you grown up thinking you were going to work in food or was it just kind of expected that that would be one of the two careers you were going to do? 

[00:04:06] Jacques Pepin: Not really, my, my brother, I have another brother who is, uh, 16 months older than me.

[00:04:12] Jacques Pepin: He was an engineer. He continued going to school, especially in France. In France, if you pass your exam too, you don't pay to go to school. So it was not even a question of money or anything like this. No, uh, I, uh, I was cooking with my mother since age six, seven years old. We were in the kitchen peeling potatoes or helping or whatever.

[00:04:33] Jacques Pepin: So, uh, it was something which was pretty natural for me to continue in that business. 

[00:04:38] Chris Spear: It's just so funny because I have twins who are 12 and I can't imagine them entering the workforce in a year, let alone working in a professional kitchen. I think it's so different today. Yeah, 

[00:04:48] Jacques Pepin: it wasn't unusual. It wasn't unusual at the time, at the way it was.

[00:04:54] Jacques Pepin: I was probably the youngest apprentice when I, when I came in, but after a couple of years, I had [00:05:00] another one behind me, which was as young or even younger than me. So that, yeah, it was the way things were. 

[00:05:07] Chris Spear: Soterios Johnson And you went on, you know, you've had such a diverse career from working in high end restaurants in France, but you also did things like research and development for Howard Johnson's, which is very different.

[00:05:18] Chris Spear: Um, speaking to young cooks and chefs, how important do you think it is to diversify your. work experience early on to try a bunch of different things versus kind of staying really niche and doing one thing. Do you have any thoughts on that? 

[00:05:33] Jacques Pepin: Well, I would think that if you want to work in good restaurant, you have to try to work with the best possible chef that you can.

[00:05:41] Jacques Pepin: And of course, often when you're young enough, if you're not married, have no kid that it's easier because you may get less money. But, uh, basically, you should go into a restaurant not with the idea that you're going to tell the chef what to do. But with the idea that you say, yes, chef, and that said, so you try to [00:06:00] absorb the food, uh, through the eye of the chef, uh, without, uh, thinking of the way you think, that is, uh, look at, uh, you know, the, the aesthetic of the chef, the way he present the food, look at, uh, the taste, you know, the, this is, uh, uh, try to see it through his eye, and you will do that for a year or two.

[00:06:22] Jacques Pepin: Work with another chef, do it again. Work maybe with another chef, do it again. After you do it with three, four chefs, then you have absorbed an enormous amount of, uh, material. And now you filter it through your own sense of taste and your sense of aesthetic, and you do your own stuff. Ultimately, you cannot escape yourself.

[00:06:40] Jacques Pepin: You are who you are, and you're going to do it. But, uh, if you can have that type of experience, then your knowledge is much better. Uh, and then, of course, I mean, for me, I went into Howard Johnson, so it was another world altogether. But, uh, I was at Howard Johnson for 10 years, [00:07:00] 1960 to 1970. When I left, I opened a restaurant on Fifth Avenue in New York called La Potagerie.

[00:07:06] Jacques Pepin: It was soup, uh, and a dessert with a piece of cheese and an apple, to have a very, very simple croissant, bread, and very inexpensive. Then I was a consultant for the Russian Tea Room. Then I opened the World Trade Center with Joe Baum. We set up 40, 000 people a day in the commissary that I set up. I'm saying all of that to say, I would never have been able to do any of those with my knowledge as a French chef.

[00:07:32] Jacques Pepin: So I learned a great deal at Howard Johnson in a different way about marketing, chemistry, uh, you know, mass production and so forth. I never worked with a chemist before, I never worked with recipe really, so it was another world altogether. I mean, if you keep your eye open, you always learn wherever you go, you know?

[00:07:51] Chris Spear: Yeah. I, um, I worked for Ikea for a number of years and I think at the time a lot of my peers and friends said to me, why would you go, you know, work for this place that [00:08:00] has, you know, frozen meatballs. But I was coming from kitchens where I didn't have the same experiences and going there similar. Like you were just speaking, I learned so much about marketing and, uh, mass production and other aspects of food service that I wasn't getting in other.

[00:08:16] Chris Spear: Kitchens. And even though I was only there a couple years, it proved invaluable to me in my culinary career. 

[00:08:23] Jacques Pepin: Well, I'm sure it would. Yes. 

[00:08:24] Chris Spear: Yep. Um, you mentioned something about working in kitchens and, you know, yes, chef, where do you see the balance now? Because I think a lot of us came up through the, you know, the chef tells you what to do and you just do it.

[00:08:35] Chris Spear: And I think now more cooks and chefs want to know the why. And on a busy night, you can't always stop and say to the chef, well, why do I do this? So finding that balance between. doing what you're told, but also pulling the threads to kind of understand the why behind what you're being told. 

[00:08:50] Jacques Pepin: For me, you know, a good restaurant is the expression, usually, of one chef.

[00:08:55] Jacques Pepin: You know, if you eat at, uh, at Lutece when, uh, Soltner was the chef [00:09:00] there, I could close my eyes and I say, I'm at Lutece. He had a style of cooking and he was, you know, from the, from Alsace, from the north part of France. And so this is it, but that's where I would want to go there for. I mean, uh, you, you cannot have, uh, ten people in the kitchen and everyone give his own advice and you do that.

[00:09:20] Jacques Pepin: Doesn't work. It has to reflect the view of someone, uh, that the way he want the food and ultimately, after you do that for a few years, as I say, By the time you do your own stuff, you want it this way, because this is the way you think, uh, it reflect your, your taste and your sense of aesthetic. So I think it's a normal process to do that.

[00:09:41] Jacques Pepin: And, uh, you learn from it, certainly. 

[00:09:45] Chris Spear: But I think much like parenting, you know, it's like, uh, I was raised in the day where my, Dad would tell me to do something and I would say, why? And he'd just say, be quiet and do it. And I think, you know, you're kind of seeing that change in kitchens as well. Cause I've, I've had that where, you know, I just tell a cook or chef to do something and they want to know why.

[00:09:59] Chris Spear: And I'm like, I don't [00:10:00] have time for this right now, but then making sure I go back to them and say, okay, like, this is, this is why we do it this way or this technique, like I think helping them understand at the core, why you're doing something a certain way is beneficial. 

[00:10:13] Jacques Pepin: Yeah, no, absolutely. At the time, you know, when someone also asked me, why do I do that?

[00:10:19] Jacques Pepin: Because I told you that's about the only answer. But then you go back to it and you explain and they understand. And even if their taste doesn't coincide exactly with yours, or sense of aesthetic, it doesn't really matter. You know, I mean, the chef can always tell you, maybe chef, we could prepare it this way.

[00:10:36] Jacques Pepin: I said, yeah, that's fine. I rather have it the other way. Okay. So that's it. 

[00:10:42] Chris Spear: What do you think makes the difference or what do you think separates a good cook from a really exceptional cook or chef? 

[00:10:50] Jacques Pepin: Well, some people have more talent than others. I mean, to a certain extent, I mean, for me particularly, I think that you first have to be a good [00:11:00] technician.

[00:11:01] Jacques Pepin: That is, you know, it's eleven o'clock in the morning, you have a hundred people sitting down at twelve, you better move. You know, so you have three cases of artichokes to do. So the first thing is the technique and I did book on technique, you know, so, uh, without any question, this is the beginning of it, the process of cooking, of speed, being clean and so forth.

[00:11:24] Jacques Pepin: So that being said, I know a fair amount of chefs who run a good kitchen and they have a good food course and they are a very good technician too and relatively lousy cook. I mean, the food is okay. It's not fantastic. So I'm sure that someone like, uh, Thomas Keller or Daniel Boulu start by being certainly good technician, but then after that there is something else.

[00:11:47] Jacques Pepin: They have talent. They have talent. They have imagination. They have other thing that they bring to it to bring that food to higher level, you know. And that people have it and some people have it. Some have it, a little bit of it. [00:12:00] And some don't and 

[00:12:02] Chris Spear: I've even listened to Thomas Keller speak. I mean, we know of the current Thomas Keller, but he had a lot of failures to when he started out.

[00:12:08] Chris Spear: He he wasn't the chef that I think we think he is today, right? So it's some regards. It's continuing to learn your craft to get better to push. There's some tenacity. I mean, he had some notable failures before he opened the French laundry. 

[00:12:21] Jacques Pepin: Was there any question? But, uh, I remember, uh, Thomas Keller, for me, when he work as an apprentice along, uh, in the Catskill, uh, in a little French restaurant there, because his brother insisted that he start that, because he was, uh, he had a bit of problem here and there.

[00:12:37] Jacques Pepin: So, uh, yes, He learned this way, but we all have our, uh, our failure, you know, to a certain extent. Uh, but then he, he carried on with it and, uh, he came through and, uh, he is now certainly, in my opinion, one of the greatest chefs we have in this country. Without a doubt. You know, there is people who work In [00:13:00] different ways.

[00:13:00] Jacques Pepin: I mean, people who express themselves, uh, by doing a different type of plate, uh, with all kind of things that you've never seen and so forth, and that's great. For him, usually, it's very concentrated. If you have a puree of carrots that I had there, uh, it's a puree of carrot, period. But when you taste it, you say, I've never had a puree of carrot this way.

[00:13:23] Jacques Pepin: So, his, uh, his imagination, or rather, or his talent to go more in depth to taste and adjust taste and adjust in depth to have something which is not particularly showy, but where the taste will be the ultimate, yeah. 

[00:13:39] Chris Spear: And a lot of his success, I think, goes back to technique, which speaks a lot to also, you know, some of your foundations.

[00:13:45] Chris Spear: So you wrote the books literally on the technique of cooking. What was your thought process when you set out to make those books? Did you have any idea of the kind of impact that would make in the culinary world, not just for home cooks, but professional chefs that they would be [00:14:00] kind of like the Bible of culinary technique for as long as they've been?

[00:14:02] Chris Spear: Mm hmm. 

[00:14:03] Jacques Pepin: No. Not at all. No. You know, a year after I was in America, I knew James Beard, Julia Child, Craig Claiborne, which were the, the, the trilogy of, uh, of cooking. You know, the trinity, rather, of, uh, great, uh, food people in, in America. The food world was very, very small. And that would come often from them, and Helen McCullough after, who was the food editor of McCall House Beautiful, who became kind of my surrogate mother, and I would go there or peel a carrot or do or even say, Wow, that's how you do it.

[00:14:36] Jacques Pepin: I say, Yes. So that I started thinking about technique this way, so I thought maybe we should start there. And I think that the first edition of that technique, I didn't have any recipe, or maybe one or two, but basically, uh, I did, oh yes, and another thing too, when I did that technique, I had color picture in the center, a whole chapter of color picture.

[00:14:58] Jacques Pepin: So I, I did a technique of [00:15:00] maybe 10, 12 thing, boiling out a chicken or a fish and stuffing it, putting it into the oven. And I say for the finished product, look at color picture page such and such. Well, they came out with the book with one, one, uh, the, the first edition with the color picture. The second edition, they take them out.

[00:15:17] Jacques Pepin: They never even remove. The part where I say, look at color, but you know, so there's nothing to look at, you know, but, uh, yeah, that's the way it was. 

[00:15:29] Chris Spear: Well, I mean, they're, but their books have stood the test of time going back to, you know, good technique is good technique. They're books I've carried with me every kitchen I've run, I've had them in my office.

[00:15:38] Chris Spear: So if someone wanted to pull them and sit and look through them, um, you know, they could because not everyone who's, you know, Who works in professional kitchens, as you know, have gone through a formal culinary training or culinary school. In fact, most of the people I've worked with haven't. So a lot of them are learning on the job and providing resources for them is something that I've always found to be really important.

[00:15:59] Jacques Pepin: Yeah, it's [00:16:00] something which existed in France normally, but did not really exist here. The special training of an apprentice. I mean, you never really had recipe, you know, I never had a recipe before I came to America, I think, you know, you go somewhere, the chef, you look, look, and you do, and eventually you do it.

[00:16:18] Jacques Pepin: This is the way we do it here. So, uh, the food was quite different at the time. I work at the Plaza Athénée in Paris, for example, we were 48 chefs. Well, one of the specialties of the Plaza Athénée, I still, I think it is still, was the lobster soufflé, you know, so, I bet you the 40 year old chef could do that lobster soufflé, you would never have known which one has done it.

[00:16:41] Jacques Pepin: This was the way it was at that time to work in a restaurant to conform, not to change the rule or do that. If you cut a tomato this way, you never would have thought of putting it on the side, cutting the other way. If you have done that, we'll say, well, what did you do that for? It's hard. You know, so conform, conform, conform, so there was, [00:17:00] in a sense, less pressure to the chef.

[00:17:02] Jacques Pepin: You didn't have to be creative or do anything. You just conform to what is done here to do it exactly the way it is. And you go on. That was, uh, something which didn't really exist that much in America at that time to learn. 

[00:17:16] Chris Spear: Do you personally ever rely on recipes or do you mostly rely just on technique?

[00:17:21] Chris Spear: Like if you wanted to make a dish, just say for home or family dinner, a dinner party, are you following a recipe? Are you using your years of experience and intuition? 

[00:17:29] Jacques Pepin: I never, I never accept if I have to, to write it down or do something. So I have to measure, uh, how much stuff, how long in the oven, you know, put it into the oven, say how long it is.

[00:17:41] Jacques Pepin: I said until it's done. Okay, it's done. Okay. And it's true, for a chef, you look at it, okay, no, another five minutes, okay, fine. So, uh, yes, that's the way it is. I mean, I do, I do those little show now that, uh, my daughter asked me to do from the [00:18:00] beginning of the pandemic, you know, on Facebook. And we've done 400 of those.

[00:18:05] Jacques Pepin: Uh, you know, when we do it, we do like, 12 a day, something like this. Those are about 4, 5, 5 minutes, 5, 6 minutes. So it's harder for my friend Tom with the, that the only person I work with is the photographer there, and Silas. I mean, I probably, I, I don't really start anything ahead, so I probably will have at some 0.4, five, six recipe in the oven.

[00:18:32] Jacques Pepin: When I put one, I say, okay, about 45 minutes. And then I start another recipe, put it into the oven that tell you minute, put another one. So we go back to that recipe. That's when he ask to say, don't change your shirt, because on that one , yes, it has to look the same. So, uh, we do those, those recipe. And I don't, I measure a little bit, and I do when I do it in front of the camera, but, uh, usually I do it [00:19:00] ahead, before, so that I can measure it exactly, and I wrote it down.

[00:19:04] Jacques Pepin: So when, uh, we put it on the air, Uh, the one who edited, uh, Tina Salter actually put, uh, the quantité and the stuff there, but it's not from what I did in front of the camera. It's the thing that I did before, because I think it's a bit boring in front of the camera to measure all of this, and I was well seasoned, and I gave them the quantité and the timing after.

[00:19:27] Jacques Pepin: Yeah, so. 

[00:19:28] Chris Spear: It's like when I do, uh, in person cooking lessons. People don't want to actually. Learn to cut an onion in front of you like if we're making soup, they just want to have the onion cut and measured and dump it in the pot, 

[00:19:38] Jacques Pepin: right? Yes, 

[00:19:39] Chris Spear: but I think you do. While it's helpful to have recipes, especially if you're not so familiar with cooking, I think you do need to be a little intuitive, like take something like a side of salmon.

[00:19:47] Chris Spear: If you have a whole side, obviously, the pieces in the middle are thicker. They're gonna take longer to cook. But then the tail piece is thinner. It's going to take less time. So to blanket, say, you know, cook the salmon for five minutes, one's going to be [00:20:00] overcooked and one's going to be undercooked. You have to kind of understand those things.

[00:20:02] Chris Spear: Yeah. 

[00:20:03] Jacques Pepin: Or either, or you have to do the belly of the salmon, fold it underneath the tail of the salmon, you fold it and tell them, you know, they all have to be approximately the same size if you want to cook them the same amount of time. 

[00:20:16] Chris Spear: So you've started a foundation now, um, can you talk a little bit about your foundation, the background of how you started it and what your ultimate goals are with it?

[00:20:25] Jacques Pepin: I am very, very lucky this way, you know, I, uh, my daughter did the Facebook that we're doing now and we have 1. 8 million people on Facebook. Uh, I would never have done that myself. I mean, I'm not too good at that. The foundation was the idea of my son in law and my daughter too. My son in law is a professional chef, you know, he teaches at Johnson Wales, and, uh, for about 14 years now or so, and prior to that he's been a chef for 40 years.

[00:20:56] Jacques Pepin: And, uh, uh, when he started at Johnson [00:21:00] O'Neill, but he went to college, uh, but, uh, he had a B. A. in, I think, in journalism. So I said, well, as long as you're in college, you won't pay for it. You should go if you plan to stay there, go back to school. So he went back and got his master and actually his Ph. D., so, and he's a very good writer.

[00:21:19] Jacques Pepin: And at some point, like, I don't know, about eight, ten years ago or so, he said, you know, you've been teaching all your life. So many books, you have hundreds and hundreds of shows. You know, I did, I did the 13th series of 26 shows for KQED, so that's for 40 some years. So he said, what do you think you would like to teach them?

[00:21:40] Jacques Pepin: I said, well, maybe we talk about it, maybe some people who have been a bit, uh, disenfranchised by life, you know, people who come out of jail, or, uh, you know, homeless people, former drug addicts, or people like that. Because I feel personally that I can teach [00:22:00] someone in six weeks, you know, how to, to clean the salad and peel asparagus and, uh, portion eggs and all that.

[00:22:08] Jacques Pepin: And in six weeks, you have those basic, and if you plan to stay in the kitchen, five years later, you're the chef there, five, six years later in a small restaurant, you know, then you have redone your life and it's kind of very, so it's been, you know, quite gratifying for us to see those, those people who kind of, uh, gravitate and redo a life.

[00:22:27] Jacques Pepin: And we need people like that in the restaurant business. So it's been good, but again, it's my, my son in law created it, not me. I mean, yeah, I'm here, of 

[00:22:37] Chris Spear: course. In conjunction, we need you for that. And for our listeners, they might have heard I had Raleigh on the show about a year, year and a half ago, and I'll link that in the show notes.

[00:22:45] Chris Spear: So if people want to listen to the whole episode on that, they'll get the Raleigh Real behind the scenes kind of discussion on that as well as more on culinary school. Um, and, and this next year you're turning 90 years old. Congratulations. That's [00:23:00] a good long life. And I know that through the foundation, you're going to be doing a year long celebration and fundraising campaign.

[00:23:07] Chris Spear: So. It sounds like there's a lot of fun events that are going to be planned over the next year. 

[00:23:12] Jacques Pepin: Yes, unfortunately, I have problem with my back. You know, in the 70s, I had a very bad car accident. I had 14 fracture. So, I had two hip replacement, I have a knee replacement. And now at my age, I mean, uh, more and more I have pain, and so I'm less and less able to walk.

[00:23:33] Jacques Pepin: And also, I hope I make it, but I'm not going to make all of those 90 bars. I'll do some of them. In fact, we did one last week or the week before at Craft in New York with Tom Colicchio. So, uh, it's a good start. And, uh, people were very generous and appreciative. And, uh, so it's, it's kind of amazing sometime, I am amazed.

[00:23:58] Chris Spear: Well, there's an amazing crew of [00:24:00] chefs who are looking to get involved in this, and that's another thing that we'll link up so people can find an event near them or figure out how to get involved. We'll be spreading the word. 

[00:24:09] Jacques Pepin: Yeah, the chefs are really very generous, you know, and you cannot cook. And differently, you have to put a lot of yourself in cooking, if you want to be good.

[00:24:18] Jacques Pepin: So, uh, by definition, chefs are generous and give their already. I mean, I remember even me when I was working in the kitchen regularly or, uh, well, I would work my day off, uh, very often, uh, for Planned Parenthood or whatever organization needed to raise money and so forth. And many, many chefs do that. Yes.

[00:24:40] Chris Spear: And I think, you know, going back to the cooks training cooks who are maybe disenfranchised. I think a kitchen is a very open and welcoming environment. A lot of people who normally wouldn't be able to have a successful career in other industries or paths, I find to be welcome in kitchens and, you know, You find quite a, the full walk of life when [00:25:00] you're working there, which is really great.

[00:25:02] Jacques Pepin: That's true. You know, that's true. It's very important. I mean, uh, we have a motto who said, everyone look the same in the eye of the stove. And it's true on many, you know, as I said, when it's 11 o'clock, you have a hundred people sitting down for lunch, you better move. And regardless of the color of your skin or whatever.

[00:25:21] Jacques Pepin: Yes, I think that too much has been said. We talked about that, in fact, yesterday with my son in law, about, uh, you hear on television, on radio and such, uh, people who haven't been to college. They would say that person is a non college, uh, educated. And I think it's a wrong thing to say. They should say a high school educated or whatever, but non college right away, that puts a label on you.

[00:25:49] Jacques Pepin: And in the food world, it really doesn't matter. I mean, I went back to school because I wanted to, because when I left school, I was 13 years old. So I went back and, uh, and for [00:26:00] like 12 years at Columbia. But the point is that, uh, uh, it really didn't change my cooking. probably changed my life. I mean, the aspect of life and yeah, it changed me certainly.

[00:26:14] Jacques Pepin: Uh, but, uh, I remember when I worked for Howard Johnson with Pierre Frenet. Pierre Frenet was a great chef and I worked with him at the pavilion when I came in New York. And after, at Howard Johnson, he was the vice president. And, uh, he's the one that Mr. Johnson hired, and, uh, Pierre wanted me to go with him, so I went.

[00:26:34] Jacques Pepin: And, uh, I remember when Mr. Johnson's father died, and after his son took over, Well, he went to Cornell University or whatever and came back, I remember him coming back in the kitchen with two or three of his cronies, a kid who worked with him too. And Pierre was, was impressed there because they came, they were college people and all that and they didn't, [00:27:00] but at that time I was already in the graduate school at Columbia.

[00:27:02] Jacques Pepin: I was working on a PhD at that time, so I was not impressed by them. In addition, they knew absolutely nothing in terms of cooking, in my opinion. So, yes, psychologically, it does challenge you, you know, to go to school. But, um, I think it's wrong to, to classify people as college educated or non college educated.

[00:27:23] Jacques Pepin: That's, uh, I mean, my opinion, 

[00:27:27] Chris Spear: but I do think it's challenging because some of the larger corporations are expecting you to have a degree. You know, I worked for Sodexo. They're a huge global food service company, right? And I was an executive chef, and I know at their corporate level through human resources, you would not get a position like I had if you did not have a culinary degree from a college such as Johnson and Wales.

[00:27:50] Chris Spear: And I think that's limiting. I mean, if you had a cook who had been in that kitchen for 15 years and worked all the way up, you mean they're not going to get a shot at that job simply because they don't have the piece of paper, [00:28:00] even though they can maybe do the job. And I'm hoping that that's maybe going to change in the future.

[00:28:04] Jacques Pepin: I hope so. Because I mean, I did not know one college educated chef when I worked in France. For those years, some went more or less higher too, but it was never mentioned. What was mentioned is what the person could do in the kitchen. Uh, and so forth. So, uh, I think it's wrong to do that. Yes, 

[00:28:24] Chris Spear: I'm sure you've seen so many changes in the culinary industry.

[00:28:27] Chris Spear: One of the things I'm interested in is technology. You've been around for the rise of things like sous vide. We now have things like precision ovens. Uh, A. I. Is working its way into the kitchen. What's been your relationship with the technology? Are you someone who's embraced these things as they've come along or looked at them with a little skepticism?

[00:28:47] Jacques Pepin: What? You never know at the beginning, but yeah, and also I remember the first time I saw a microwave oven at Howard Johnson when I was in the test kitchen, and the guy told me, [00:29:00] you know, explained to me that, uh, the heat come from the friction of the element. It doesn't come from the center. And, uh, so, he said, you see, and at that time it was an enormous oven with a very small door.

[00:29:14] Jacques Pepin: And he had a little, uh, a little neon light, you know, that you are used to have in bathroom, a little neon light. And he said, if there is any leak, you see, it goes in front of the thing, two feet in front of the thing, if you put it on, it light up in his hand. Because there was a, uh, I said, wow, I'm not staying in front of that machine ever again.

[00:29:34] Jacques Pepin: You know, so it was a new thing like this. Now I think I use probably for me, especially being alone now, I use the microwave oven probably more than anything else, you know, in the kitchen to reheat, to do one thing or another. So yes, those things are very important. You know, you have to come with it. I mean, uh, my God, before the food processor, You know, we used to do quenelle in Lyon, [00:30:00] by quenelle, to pound the fish with a mortar and pestle, to push it through a screen, and to work it out on ice with a spatula.

[00:30:08] Jacques Pepin: Now, maybe for a young chef, that would be good to learn, to know how to do that, the way it comes together, but now you put in the food processor, one second, right, it's done. So yes, without any question, you have to follow to follow the what's going on, because it usually help you a great deal. Yes. 

[00:30:26] Chris Spear: And at the end of the day, if it's for the betterment of the food, you know, it's funny, like when Gordon Ramsay had his shows like kitchen nightmares, the first thing you do is like throw out the kitchen in the microwave.

[00:30:37] Chris Spear: And that, I think, led to a wave of young cooks and chefs saying, Yeah, real cooks don't use microwaves. But I don't understand that at all. I mean, do I want to cook a filet mignon in a microwave? No. But does it serve a great purpose in a kitchen? Absolutely. 

[00:30:51] Jacques Pepin: Yeah. I mean, if you know how to use it, uh, you know, again, you can diminish certainly, uh, I have tried all kind of thing from opening [00:31:00] oyster and clam to doing all kind of thing in the food processor.

[00:31:04] Jacques Pepin: Do I do it when I have to open clam and oyster? No, I do it by hand, but if it helps in the food processor, help someone to do it because it's not that easy to do, yeah, why not? I mean, uh, one of the greatest invention in the, in the saran wrap, you know, plastic wrap, stuff like that, and rubber spatula.

[00:31:23] Jacques Pepin: Rubber spatula didn't exist or plastic wrap, but I'm quite frank, you know, And that's a big help in the kitchen, you know, all of those little things. 

[00:31:31] Chris Spear: What do you like for cuisines besides French cooking and food? Do you have other global cuisines that you're, that you're drawn to? 

[00:31:40] Jacques Pepin: Well, uh, I am often considered to be the quintessential French chef.

[00:31:47] Jacques Pepin: And then you open. I have 73 books, so you open one of my books 72 and you have a black bean soup with the sliced banana and cilantro on top. Well, my wife born in New York City, [00:32:00] but from a Puerto Rican mother, and then you'll have a, you know, a lobster roll from Connecticut and a New England clam chowder from Howard Johnson and so forth.

[00:32:10] Jacques Pepin: So, I consider myself probably now the quintessential American chef, much more, because I occasionally have a French recipe in my book, but it's by chance, because I just happen to do it. I don't really think about it in those way at all. I don't think I ever did, actually. 

[00:32:29] Chris Spear: Are there any cuisines that you've been turned on to, like, in recent years that maybe you had never tried before?

[00:32:34] Chris Spear: Like, now I'm seeing a lot of Filipino restaurants opening up, whereas maybe we didn't see them and I'd never had a lot of them. Have you found anything recently that you love that maybe you hadn't tried until recent 

[00:32:47] Jacques Pepin: years? I try anything you put in front of me. I like to try new things and all that. I mean, when I was in France, I didn't know Korean cooking or Japanese cooking.

[00:32:57] Jacques Pepin: I knew a bit of Chinese, but there was no [00:33:00] Japanese. And I'd love to try new cooking and new ideas, the way the same piece of fish is done by a culture and done by another one, too. Yes, no question about it. 

[00:33:15] Chris Spear: How do you keep going writing books and finding new things to write about? 

[00:33:20] Jacques Pepin: Well, I do less and less now.

[00:33:23] Jacques Pepin: I mean, I have a new book coming out next year. Uh, I'm sure this is going to be the last one, but this one, I did a book, uh, years ago, uh, well, called, uh, the art of craft. And, uh, so that was technique too. So I did a few years ago, the art of the chicken. I paint for like over 50 years, 60 years. So I, I asked my publisher, I want to do a book of my panning of chicken, and she said, great, terrific.

[00:33:55] Jacques Pepin: As soon as I send two pictures of chicken, she said, can we have a recipe with that? I said, uh, I [00:34:00] said, no, this is not. So I said, okay, fine. I won't do recipe, but I'm going to tell you a story about chicken. And that's what I did the book. So there are recipe. I mean, just a narrative recipe or what my father, my mother used to do, or what we did at the Plaza Athénée in Paris or stuff like this.

[00:34:18] Jacques Pepin: Uh, so it's a book of story like this with, uh, The Art of the Chicken. The next one, last one, is going to be The Art of Jack Paper. So at that point, I have a hundred painting and a hundred recipes, so. Do you still paint? Yeah, I did yesterday. 

[00:34:36] Chris Spear: I do, um, more abstract stuff. I don't have the eye for it, but my daughter does.

[00:34:40] Chris Spear: So, she'll maybe have a career in painting. Me, it's just a lot of, uh, dots and splooshes on 

[00:34:45] Jacques Pepin: the canvas. Well, I, I do all, for example, the panic that I, that I had finished yesterday, my daughter was there and, uh, I didn't even realize that I look at it this morning with, uh, Tom, my [00:35:00] friend with the one taking the picture, he took it.

[00:35:02] Jacques Pepin: He said, I'm going to take a picture of it. And I say, what's written in the back? So I see, note for sale. That was my daughter who put that yesterday. This, it's an abstract, and all of the abstract that I do, usually, she like and she, she keep it. 

[00:35:19] Chris Spear: Well, we look forward to seeing that book. So, so your, um, Chicken, the art of the chicken was just intended to be a fully art book.

[00:35:27] Chris Spear: That was the intention. 

[00:35:28] Jacques Pepin: That's what I thought, yes. It was a couple of story. And now it's not that there are, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there is a, there is recipe, as I said, because I said my aunt used to do this, that too. So it is not listed by ingredient quantity and so forth. It's just a story narrative, you know, type of thing.

[00:35:48] Chris Spear: Yeah, no, I have that book and it's, it's great and a beautiful cover there too. This 

[00:35:52] Jacques Pepin: is the way you work with a chef usually. I mean, if you talk to another chef, you go somewhere and say, Gee, that was good, what did you do? I [00:36:00] talked to Salter, whatever, say, you know, I, I sautéed that, I added a little bit of this, they say, Gee, that's a good idea.

[00:36:05] Jacques Pepin: So, between chef, professional like that, usually it's always narrative like that. You don't say, I put two and a half teaspoon of that, or that's, you know. 

[00:36:15] Chris Spear: Well, if you could leave one piece of advice for people out there, whether they're young chefs in professional kitchens or home cooks, what advice would you have for them?

[00:36:24] Jacques Pepin: Well, I always say, you know, the secret of life is not that complicated. If you make a living out of something you love to do, you never have to go to work, you know, and that's true. So, uh, at the French Culinary Institute, I was the dean there for 25 years. So I saw so many doctor, lawyer, accounting, and those people making a lot of money for like 20, 30 years of their life from, uh, uh, age 18 to 45.

[00:36:53] Jacques Pepin: And then all of a sudden they become cook. I mean, they do no money in the kitchen to start with compared [00:37:00] to the money they made before, but they've never been as happy in their life. And that's You know, that's very important, yes, to try to do, when you send your kid to school and all that, when you look for a job, you have to keep that into consideration, that often people don't, they continue in that career because they started there, they make money and they go, they don't really like it, too, and that, that's so good to spend your life this way.

[00:37:26] Jacques Pepin: Yeah, I love what I do and, you know. I don't have to go to work ever. 

[00:37:32] Chris Spear: Yeah. I mean, when you spend a minimum of 40 hours at a job, and if you work in a professional kitchen, it's quite often longer. You're going to see these people more than your family. I mean, there were many years that I saw my sous chef more than I saw my wife and children.

[00:37:46] Chris Spear: So why would you want to be in an environment like that? If it's just for the money, I mean, yes, we need money to pay our bills and get by, but I want to enjoy what I'm doing every day. And hopefully people can make both of those things work for them. 

[00:37:58] Jacques Pepin: Yes, that's true. [00:38:00] And again, that's why the, the amount of colors that you have and all that should not be emphasized there because it becomes something negative there that you didn't have this or that, but in fact, very often doesn't make any difference there.

[00:38:13] Chris Spear: Well, I love this industry. I've been in it since I was 16. I don't know that I have 75 years in me like you, Chef, but, um, you know, it seems like before I know it, I'll maybe be there. 

[00:38:25] Jacques Pepin: I think you will. 

[00:38:27] Chris Spear: Well, is there anything we didn't talk about that you want to discuss or share before we get out of here today?

[00:38:33] Jacques Pepin: Not really. I mean, you know, uh, this is, uh, beginning of winter now. So I'm waiting for my daughter to be here for Thanksgiving. This is the greatest holiday, uh, for me ever, because there is no date of some battle where you beat the shit out of whoever. There is no religious implication. There is nothing.

[00:38:57] Jacques Pepin: It's just food. Why [00:39:00] do people together to enjoy it? So this is the greatest holiday ever. So I'm looking for it. What's your 

[00:39:05] Chris Spear: favorite Thanksgiving dish? 

[00:39:08] Jacques Pepin: Well, of course, the turkey is essential for me, you know. Turkey, or sometimes goose, we do, but the goose are not easy to find now. 

[00:39:16] Chris Spear: No, I haven't had goose in ages.

[00:39:18] Jacques Pepin: Yeah, uh, and, uh, with, uh, often with, uh, chestnuts and stuff like that, we're doing it. 

[00:39:24] Chris Spear: Well, I'm coming to your house. Send me, just send me your address and I'll be up there. 

[00:39:27] Jacques Pepin: All right, good. Okay. 

[00:39:29] Chris Spear: Well, Chef, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today. I really appreciate it. 

[00:39:33] Jacques Pepin: All right, you're welcome.

[00:39:35] Chris Spear: And as always to all of our listeners, this has been Chris with Chefs Without Restaurants. Thanks so much for listening and have a great week. Thank you. Happy cooking. You're still here? The podcast's over! If you are indeed still here, thanks for taking the time to listen to the show. I'd love to direct you to one place, and that's chefswithoutrestaurants.

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