The risotto problem was driving him nuts. On a flat plate, the well-sauced risotto he favored spread out unappealingly. In a concave bowl, it sat in a dome-shaped mound, the interior overcooking while the edges got cold. For a perfectionist like Thomas Keller, chef-owner of The French Laundry, in Yountville, California, this was very annoying.
Then, during a holiday in France, he took a detour to Limoges to visit a couple of the famous French porcelain factories. At the Raynaud factory he met the president, Bertrand Raynaud, who, completely unexpectedly, asked him, "How would you like to create an entirely new line of porcelain serving dishes?" Keller jumped at the opportunity. It provided a unique chance to design plates from a kitchen point of view rather than a dining room point of view. In the words of Cliff Morgan-Keller's design adviser, with partner David Hughes-this would be "the first time one chef's vision of food has determined the shape of a plate." Raynaud, who has been surrounded by fine porcelain all his life, told them that he had been inspired by the work of Claus J. Riedel, who, decades earlier, had designed a selection of glasses for specific wines. "I like cooking," said Raynaud, "so I had been wondering if it was possible to adjust my porcelain to fit the needs of certain recipes."
Last April, Keller and Morgan returned to Limoges to go over the first prototypes with Raynaud. At the factory, the conference table quickly became cluttered with heavily marked-up plates and bowls. At first, things did not go smoothly, stalling completely at one point due to Morgan's frustration with, as he put it, "the limitations of the material." Keller's sectioned TV Dinner plate, for example, modeled after the Swanson design from the 1950s, didn't make the cut with Raynaud. .
"Squares are expensive and difficult to produce," Raynaud explained. "You see a lot, but I think it is of the past, not the future." Slowly, however, they agreed upon styles and shapes and patterns. In a new line to be introduced in early 2003 for both the professional and retail markets, the Raynaud factory will create standard items like cups and saucers, butter plates, and pasta bowls, but also pieces that definitely show the imprint of Keller's offbeat imagination.
"The point of the dishes," Keller says, explaining the philosophy behind his Quenelle dish, Soup Box, and Oysters and Pearls plate (named for a signature French Laundry dish), among others, "is to create inspiration in the chef. If I saw this dish, I'd buy it. I could use it for anything from homard gelée to chocolate ganache. Twenty years ago, you had only a few choices. Dishes are not just a round plate, a bread and butter plate anymore."
And what of Keller's risotto problem? The Raynaud vessel will be a dish-bowl hybrid. It will be a flat-bottomed basin with nearly vertical sides. And its central concavity will be the perfect receptacle for the loose risotto that Keller favors. Problem solved.
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