“I was always getting yelled at,” laughed Hoffman, 36, who in 2010 was the youngest American chef to earn a Michelin star as the chef of Étoile at Domaine Chandon in Yountville.
That strict approach extended to the kitchen, according to grandson Perry Hoffman, who said he began working at the restaurant around age 5. “I don’t like the salt sprinkled on top I need it incorporated to give a good flavor,” Sally said. Smoking wasn’t allowed - and neither were salt shakers on the tables. Despite the relaxed tenor, there were rules. Guests were encouraged to stroll through the property’s garden, a tradition that continues today. Her desire to make the restaurant feel like home led to some of the conventions that defined the French Laundry, such as one seating and a set menu per night. “And I was just going, ‘Oh, my God!’ I thought, well, I guess I’m off to a good start.” “He kissed me on both cheeks and said, ‘How did you learn to make the clam spaghetti the real way?’” Sally recalled. Under Keller, the French Laundry, where the nine-course chef’s tasting menu costs $350, became a restaurant with global gravitational pull, a must-visit for food obsessives.īut there’s been an unintended byproduct of Keller’s outsize success at the restaurant: the minimizing of the Schmitts’ tenure there in the collective culinary consciousness.Īnd it’s not just well-heeled diners who’ve apparently forgotten: When Don Schmitt, who also had served as Yountville’s mayor, died in 2017, the many publications that once breathlessly covered his restaurant did not carry an obituary for him. Keller’s re-imagining of fine dining there was a revelation. Especially at the time.ĭespite all of this, what happened after the restaurant changed hands in 1994 was on another level. I just put food on the table.”īut it was a statement. I didn’t really have a statement to make. “I wasn’t trying to prove anything to the world about simple, fresh, local food. “I didn’t have a mission,” Sally said recently from her favorite armchair in her cozy living room when asked about the philosophy behind her cooking. The Schmitts, “along with Chez Panisse, probably shaped the whole Bay Area dining scene for decades” with unfussy food that, owing to their restaurant’s set-menu format, required diners to trust Sally’s French-inflected, California-influenced taste, Bauer said. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)Ī former employee of celebrated chef Thomas Keller is suing him and his three-star Michelin restaurants - Per Se in New York and the French Laundry in California - for discrimination, saying she was denied a job transfer and ultimately let go because she was pregnant.In the late 1970s, Napa Valley was shedding its identity as a rural outpost and embracing its potential as a high-end culinary destination, with the French Laundry front and center. Vanessa Scott-Allen is seeking $5 million in damages for allegations that include sex discrimination and violation of pregnancy disability leave and says she hopes her trial, which starts Monday, June 3, 2019, will draw attention to a "culture of misogyny in fine dining," said her attorney, Carla Minnard. A former employee of celebrated chef Thomas Keller is suing him and his three-star Michelin restaurants, Per Se in New York and the French Laundry in California, for discrimination, saying she was denied a job transfer and ultimately let go because she was pregnant. FILE - This March 9, 2017, file photo, shows celebrated chef Thomas Keller in the kitchen of his French Laundry restaurant in Yountville, Calif.
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