BACK TO THE FUTURE
Vongerichten is currently working on a new project in New York, something he’s never tried: a vegetarian restaurant. “I’ve never done that before, I’m going back to school now! I’m working with two nutritionists. I’ve been cooking for 42 years now but I left school when I was 16. I learned how to cook, but I didn’t know the scientific part of doing so.”
Not many may realise, but Vongerichten has not been formally trained in the culinary arts; rather, he picked up all his knowledge and skills through apprenticeships, with the likes of Paul Bocuse and Paul Haeberlin. Confessing he was “bad at school”, Vongerichten says when he was 16, his parents took him to a fine dining restaurant, three-star Auberge de l’Ill, and he “fell in love with it right away”.
| Advertisement |
He says: “I realised, ‘this is me’. I grew up with good food but I didn’t have an interest in it, but I didn’t know you could make a living out of food. It was 1973, and people only went to restaurants for an occasion. Today they eat at home for an occasion! At the time, my father asked if I really wanted to be a cook; it was at the bottom [of the job ladder]. And today it’s one of the most glamourous jobs.”
“If you find your passion, you jump into it. I still wake up in the morning and run for work… after 42 years. I love that every day is different. It could be a total disaster tonight, but tomorrow we erase everything and start from scratch. You can reinvent yourself every single day. I love that.”
His advice for young chefs is to find that passion and work hard. “For people to stand 14 hours a day, at the end you’re here to please people. It’s many hours, and lots of hard work, but you get so much satisfaction.” Referring to feedback, not only from guests but his own, he says he eats his own food so it has to be perfect. “A lot of chefs taste but they don’t eat. The only way to see if a dish is well–balanced is to eat it from A–Z. I want the first spoon to be as exciting as the last one. If after two spoons, you push the plate away, that means the dish is missing something.”
What else is left for Vongerichten to do? Hotels, he says. “That’s my dream. We’re in the entertainment business, where you capture people’s attention for three hours, but when people stay over… it’s a bigger experience that you can give them. I enjoy working on details, and the more I go to hotels, the more I travel, the more I am inspired to do these things. And then I will be complete.”
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
