Thomas Keller
Thomas Keller is an actor, born 1955.
Keller is a chef rather than a performer, and he sits in this catalog for the reasons chefs now do: he wrote a book that people study, and he became a public figure. The French Laundry, his restaurant in Yountville in the Napa Valley, is the institution his name is attached to, and it brought him James Beard Foundation awards including Best California Chef in 1996 and Best Chef in America in 1997. For years it was a fixture near the top of the annual list of the world's fifty best restaurants, until the voting rules were changed so that previous winners could no longer be considered.
The French Laundry Cookbook, published in 1999, is the document that carried him beyond the dining room. It is a demanding book, closer to a manual of technique and philosophy than a set of weeknight recipes, and it has shaped how a generation of American cooks think about precision and about what a restaurant kitchen owes a plate.
His screen presence is slight and deliberately so: additional voice work on Ratatouille, and an appearance as himself on Somebody Feed Phil. The cooking is the career; the camera is a footnote to it.
Movies (1)
TV (1)
Books (1)
Where to start with Thomas Keller
Read before you watch. The French Laundry cookbook is the actual work, and it repays being treated as a book rather than a reference: the essays and the insistence on technique are the point, and almost nobody executes the recipes at home as written.
Then Ratatouille, which is the most sympathetic portrait of professional cooking any film has managed, and which took its food seriously enough to bring real chefs into the process. Keller's own contribution to it is a voice credit, so watch it for the kitchen rather than for him.
Somebody Feed Phil is where you can see the man himself, relaxed and off duty, which is a useful corrective if the cookbook has left you with the impression of pure severity.