Elite Traveler Summer 2019

INFLUENCE THE BIG INTERVIEW

Jean-Georges Vongerichten on cultivating a global empire

Hailed as the chef who reinvented French cuisine, Jean-Georges Vongerichten sat down with Alexandra Cheney to ruminate on sustainable eating, meticulousness and why there’s more to fine dining thanMichelin stars

“My role as a chef is to transform food in a simple way. I don’t want a shrimp to look like a noodle, or a hand- harvested scallop to be anything but.”

There’s a finite precision to everything in Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s orbit. Some of it reflects his upbringing: He was raised in a two-story house dating to the 1780s with his parents, grandparents and three siblings, where order was both demanded and respected. More of it stemmed from his four decades as a chef and global restaurateur. His story isn’t a particularly linear one — he came to cooking from his love of eating — bouncing from France, the motherland, through Europe and Asia until he landed in New York in 1986. Throughout his three-decade tenure in Manhattan, though, no other chef has continually impacted the culinary landscape quite as profoundly as Vongerichten. He’s been credited with influencing how New Yorkers dine out, as well as how other chefs cook and what restaurants look like throughout the city. That may sound a bit overstated, but the proof is in the (coconut rice) pudding: Whether it’s at his eponymous Central Park West restaurant, Jean-Georges at the Connaught in London or JG Tokyo, Vongerichten was the first to forge a global franchise based on haute cuisine. Perpetually (and naturally) tan, Vongerichten is perfectly relaxed, gently reclining in a camel-colored leather chair in his West Coast restaurant on the ground floor of Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills. Beneath a pair of thick brows, the chef keeps one eye on the kitchen at all times. “I have over 150,000 recipes. Not bad for 44 years of work. Some are from home, some are new, others dormant,” Vongerichten explains in a quiet,

matter-of-fact tone. “We create and upload videos of everything we do; we video the technique and have a picture of the dish so all of my kitchens can prepare anything.” Raised the eldest of four siblings in Illkirch-Graffenstaden, a suburb of Strasbourg, France, Vongerichten was set to inherit his great-grandfather’s coal-distribution business. But at the age of 15, he was thrown out of the local engineering school for poor grades. It wasn’t until the sight, smell and experience of eating foie gras, venison and salmon soufflé — a celebratory meal for his 16th birthday at the three- Michelin-starred Auberge de l’Ill — ignited an unknown career path. When

the chef stopped by to inquire about the meal, Vongerichten’s father George offered up his son as a dishwasher. Less than a year later, the failed engineer became a star apprentice. “In that environment, I was special. I grew up overnight,” he says. After working through four three- Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe and at five-star hotels in Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong, Vongerichten acquiesced to chef Louis Outhier’s request that he join New York’s (now razed) Drake Hotel restaurant, Lafayette. Replacing butter and cream sauces with infused oils and introducing common Asian ingredients like ginger and lemongrass into classical French food, Vongerichten created a fusion cuisine unlike anything previously seen in the New York dining scene. Needless to say, he made quite a splash. Five years later, in 1991, the then 34-year-old chef opened his first New York restaurant, JoJo (Vongerichten’s childhood nickname), and since then, he hasn’t slowed down, averaging a new restaurant each year. This year, he is set to open Paris Café & Lisbon Lounge at JFK airport; another pair of namesake restaurants at Keswick Hall, a resort in Charlottesville, Virginia; and in Four Seasons Philadelphia at Comcast Center, to name a few. Maintaining a precise, consistent voice is paramount to Vongerichten’s success. “My role as a chef is to transform food in a simple way. I don’t want a shrimp to look like a noodle, or a hand-harvested scallop to be anything but. I add a little cumin to a carrot and it’s wow.”

Vongerichten’s egg caviar

Photos Francesco Tonelli