David Bouley: Chef and Restaurateur

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So chef, 1985, Tribeca,

which wasn't really known as Tribeca back then.

It was known as this deserted warehouse district.

That's true.

You opened a place called Montrachet.

Montrachet was, you know, a milestone in

French cooking in New York.

Probably my restaurant in the entire country because

so many things that we had done there hadn't been done yet.

And it was a big success.

Like tasting menus.

Big tasting menu, which was very synchronized

not using the same product more than once,

consistency of digestion, energy,

you know, balance of fats and acids,

vegetables that were chosen for particular levels

of stimulating the palette.

All these things that we learned on tasting menu.

And many other things that were significantly unique

in a French restaurant, which was pretty much

cooking everything to order.

Nothing was prepared in advance,

so you had a different level of

flavors and textures when you work like that.

And I had to bring the little pots over from France

in my suitcases because we didn't even have

little pots here.

Every French restaurant that I worked in

at that time in New York,

which was LaSerre, Copage, Perigour, Brussels,

they had big baymories and you had a ladle

and you took a gallon and a half of sauce

you took a little bit out and you put it on the plate

and everything was kind of pre-cooked.

So what we did at Montrachet was to practice what

our student want, which was nouvelle cuisine

the purity of the ingredients,

the cooking of the minute,

everything that's connected to the season.

It was a different style with less structure,

it wasn't rigid, it was very vulnerable,

very sensitive, very pure.

But it was a lot more work, and there was a lot of risk

and we still had small teams then.

So the restaurants that were cooking French food had

many covers also of small teams

compared to today.

So the food had to be designed for structure and

for execution, so it had to take a lot of concessions

in terms of how it was served,

so that you could be ready to serve au cou vomair

with a few hands.

Today we have 22 people in our kitchen at one time

upstairs at night,

Le Souble had 31 in those days, in the mid-80's,

that's an incredibly large team.

At Montrachet, there were four of us

and everyone was a career change person

so I am there the only professional,

and had all these career change people

and we made a stand and it went really well.