“The philosophy supposedly was to break you as a young person when you were entering those kitchens and then rebuild you and make you a champion, which I think is very idiotic in between us because we lost a lot of talent in those kitchens. People who would have been able to do the job and just were leaving because they couldn't take it.”
The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters · Food & Beverage · October 2026
Ripert, the chef of Le Bernardin, on the kitchens he trained in as a young cook in France, where he says being punched, kicked and screamed at was routine. He goes on to admit that once he had authority he did the screaming himself, until a night in the early 1990s when he asked why everyone was leaving his restaurant and decided the answer was him.
Transcript
…was, especially when you're younger, was very not mindful. You endured. In your training in France, you endured incredibly intense and possibly abusive, possibly traumatic experiences. Tell me about your journey to mindfulness in the kitchen when that's not how you were raised in the kitchen.
Well, I think first we have to
define what mindfulness means. And I think a lot of people that I know at least are a bit confused with the word mindfulness. And it's two words that people are very often a bit confused and curious. Meditation. So it's not, we're not talking about meditation here. Mindfulness means to take, I mean, obviously to take care about others, to be mindful of others. That's the definition for sure. But also mindfulness means to be fully in the present, right now, right here at this moment, and not to think about the past, which doesn't exist any longer, neither the future that doesn't exist yet. So mindfulness is that very powerful exercise of the mind, of being here and now. It's what we are doing. You and I, we have an exercise of mindfulness. In the now, right? We are in the now. And that is very important. Now, my upbringing was tough because when I was in the kitchen in France, it was a lot of physical abuse, verbal abuse. Physical being punched in the shoulder, sometimes receiving a plate in the face, sometimes being kicked in the butt, being yelled at all day long, being insulted. And that was a tough environment. The…
I want to get to some of the food in the book and the transition over, one thing I thought was part of what you're talking about, right, when you're in a place with other people
and maybe you work hard together or maybe you feel some sense of responsibility for their well-being, but also know that, like, you know, they you're a position of authority. One of the things that helps sort of bridge, I think, that gap is a sense of gratitude. Absolutely. Gratitude for one…
Yes, and yes. So, first, the recipe. Soca