858: Mindful Cooking with Eric Ripert and The Two Saddest Kitchens with Roz Chast and Jason Adam Katzenstein

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Francis Lam (1:26)

I'm Francis Lam and this is The Splendid Table from APM, American Public Media.

So for 30 years, Chef Eric Ripert has run what is probably the top kitchen in New York City at the legendary French seafood restaurant Le Bernardin. Coming to the US as a hot shot young cook from France, he joined this heralded restaurant which is owned by a brother and sister team of Gilbert and Maggie Lacose. But shockingly, just a couple of years later, Chef Gilbert passed away. And Maggie tapped Eric as the new chef and vowed to continue on. And continue they did, maintaining a perfect four-star rating from the New York Times for over three decades. The highest honor of three Michelin stars for as long as the Michelin Guide has been in the US. But for all the achievement and the intensity of that level of performance, he became a Buddhist and traveled more and more to Korea to study and cook in Buddhist temples, a side quest that's become a main thrust in his life and outlook on food. His new cookbook is called Mindful Cooking, and I was delighted to talk with him in the studio.

So Chef Ripert, thank you so much for coming by.

Eric Ripert (2:58)

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Francis Lam (3:00)

I am super excited to talk with you. I think the first question I'm going to ask you and the first question everyone will want to ask you about this book is, how did one of the world's most lauded, most famous seafood chefs end up writing a vegan cookbook?

Yes.

Eric Ripert (3:20)

That's a good question, Eric. Actually, the first one to ask me that.

Francis Lam (3:23)

Okay.

Eric Ripert (3:24)

Well, there you go.

Francis Lam (3:26)

I'm better at this than I realize.

Eric Ripert (3:27)

Yes. That's true. Le Bernardin is a seafood restaurant.

I'm there for a long time now, 30 years. But I decided to do Mindful Cooking after reading a book from a very famous French author, Mathieu Ricard, who's a monk and lives in Nepal. He's French. And he wrote A Plea for Animals. And when I read the book, I really thought about the way we are raising animals and potential suffering for those animals. And I always wanted to do this book, but I was not ready. And at the same time, I started to go to Korea and spend time visiting the monasteries and the temples, because I'm a Buddhist practitioner myself. Yeah.

And I had a lot of good time in Korea. I mean, partying in Seoul and then going to the temples. And in temple food, they do not have animal products because they do not want to harm any animals. And they cultivate their own food in gardens when they can, or they buy from local farmers. And I was fascinated when I went there the first time. And I was with a nun called John Kwan that became very famous a bit later because of many things. Chef Stable did a profile on her, and the New York Times wrote a beautiful two or three pages article. And then after that, the media all over the world. And I still went to Korea and met with her, and we are still very close friends considering the distance and the fact that she's a nun and a lay person.