"When I talk about working for Robuchon, I feel like I am talking about the war," says Ripert. Despite this, he remains close to his former mentor, and they speak frequently. Ultimately, Ripert says, he endured Robuchon because it was a great honor to work for him. It was an experience he knew he had to go through in order to become a great chef himself. And he's glad he did.
In the spring of 1989, Ripert was sent by Robuchon to Washington, D.C., to work for Jean-Louis Palladin. Originally from Gascony, Jean-Louis—as he is universally known throughout the cooking world—was famous for having become, at age 28, the youngest chef ever to earn two Michelin stars. The bushy-haired, near-sighted chef had made a name for himself cooking meat and offal with the powerful flavors of southwestern France. "To me, no one equals the force of Jean-Louis—those flavors, that intensity," Ripert says of his friend. "I learned technique from Robuchon, but Jean-Louis is my taste and spirit."
Ripert's experience with Jean-Louis was his awakening as a cook; he likens the process to going from Catholic boys school to Woodstock. "It was," says Ripert, "the discovery of myself. The opening of my instinct. I never knew that I had talent. In France it was taboo to say 'I have talent.' But I discovered that what I did have was discipline. And knowledge. And, with these, I developed instinct. Now I touch an onion, and something is happening inside me. I understand the nature of that onion. I have a sensitivity in my hands. The hand and the mind have to work together."
Ripert had always dreamed of living in New York City. So, after his 18-month contract with Jean-Louis ended, he immediately found work with David Bouley, who had done a short stage at Jamin. Then, in 1991, Gilbert Le Coze, chef-owner of Le Bernardin, called Ripert to ask if he would take command of Le Bernardin's kitchen, replacing Eberhard Müller. Both Ripert and Le Coze initially balked at what they perceived as the other's arrogance, but Le Coze set the tone of the relationship they would ultimately have with an odd request: to join Ripert on vacation in Spain before he began work at the restaurant. By the time the young cook took command of the kitch¬en, he and Le Coze were close friends.
Ripert was 26, and, by his own admission, became a tyrant in the kitchen himself, a fact he now regrets. Just three years later, in July of 1994, Le Coze died at age 48, shocking the entire restaurant community. Ripert was stunned. "We were friends," he says, "but it was more than friendship. It was almost like a father-son relationship. Gilbert had no children, and I had lost my father when I was young. It was as though someone from my own family passed away." But there was still the business to run. Ripert heard rumors that with Le Coze no longer at the helm, Le Bernardin would quickly lose its coveted New York Times stars and that, scenting disaster, the food critics would soon descend. That September, before the start of what both he and Maguy Le Coze, Gilbert's sister and co-owner of the restaurant, knew would be a stressful season, he took two weeks off to regroup. Before he left, Maguy told Ripert that she wanted a completely new menu. One that was entirely his own.
"I knew what I had to do," he recalls. He and Maguy then waited anxiously for the New York Times review, which eventually ran in the spring of 1995. It began, "Four stars are easier to get than to keep…" And from that moment on, Ripert never looked back, not simply carrying on Le Coze's philosophy but taking fish cookery to new heights, simplifying it, purifying it—bass ceviche with cilantro and mint, halibut poached in a saffron broth, skate spiced and roasted. "Each fish," wrote the Times, "has been stripped to its basic elements and dressed up to emphasize them." In a matter of months, Ripert had been rocketed from invisible chef de cuisine to the realm of celebrity, a status that has increased yearly. And that has carried him inexorably away from cooking.
In his search for a path by which to return to the wellspring of his culinary artistry—cooking whatever he felt like, cooking dishes that reminded him of cooking with his mother—Ripert concocted an idea for a book: a book about the art of cooking and spontaneous creation and the creative mind. The concept is so odd that despite his celebrity no publisher was eager to take it on. But so confident, so sure of himself and his mission, is he that he began the book in the summer of 2000 anyway, at the house with the pool near Sag Harbor.
"I haven't cooked meat in so long. It makes me happy!" He is searing a pork loin in an enamel pot. "Meat is very sensual. Fish is delicate. With fish you have to be almost discreet." He makes a fist. "Meat, you cook with your guts." He is cooking in a way he has not cooked since he was a boy: vegetable salads, quick sautés of fish with a vinaigrette for a sauce, hearty curries and rustic one-pot stews with powerful seasonings. "This really reminds me of cooking with my mother," he says as he creates a lobster nage, a broth he seasons with jazzlike intuition—cumin and coriander, fennel, a fresh hot chile—and finishes with a classical touch of fresh tarragon.
The entire week we are there is filled with discoveries. "I never realized how important shallots are to me," he says with something approaching wonder as he minces some. Dicing lemon confit for a Moroccan tagine, he says, "Lemon confit is something I cannot cook without." The vehicle for these discoveries is spontaneous home cooking, rustic and simple—until Ripert touches the duck, which he will sear, then roast to rare, then use the bones to make a stock. "Classical food I cannot f— up, I'm sorry," he says, scraping browned bits off the bottom of the pan with a wood spoon. "I do it out of fear! Joël and Jean-Louis would never forgive me!"
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