The Jacques Pépin conversation event at the Newport Wine and Food Festival was understandably sold out this year. For gourmands, who wouldn’t want to listen to the television personality talk about his 75-year experience in the industry? It was an incredible treat to hear from Pépin and his daughter, Claudine Pépin, about his career and culinary experiences, while sipping on his recommended wines (the Taittinger rosé was sublime) amidst the stunning Rosecliff mansion ballroom.
The Newport Mansions Wine & Food Festival served as a kind of launch pad for the Jacques Pépin Foundation’s (JPF) inaugural nationwide fundraising campaign. In honor of his 90th birthday, the initiative will feature 90 chef-hosted restaurant gatherings with other big names in the business, such as Thomas Keller, Norman Van Aken, Rick Bayless, Jody Adams, Daniel Boulud, Lee Anne Wong, Andrew Zimmern, Tom Colicchio, Maneet Chauhan, Ming Tsai, Katie Button and Jeremy Sewall. The campaign “will expand JPF’s grant program supporting community kitchens that provide free culinary and life skills training to those who have been disenfranchised from the workforce, and link participating restaurant chefs with their local community kitchens.”
“90 for 90” held a kickoff at Marea Restaurant in New York in June with the announcement of the campaign and has leaped into high gear this month, starting with a star-studded affair at Gramercy Tavern with Executive Chef Mike Anthony and Danny Meyer, Founder and Executive Chairman of Union Square Hospitality Group. There are two dinners in Boston next month, at La Padrona and Row 34. “90 for 90” is back in Newport next year, in May, at Giusto. See here for the full schedule.
I spoke with Jacques Pépin about his efforts to organize these incredible dinners, his advice for other young chefs, his love of Newport, the impact of his foundation, his secret for a good life and the chef’s favorite memories of Julia Child. It was a delightful interview.
You’ve lived this amazing life. What do you think is the secret to happiness?
To make a living out of something you love. So this is basically it. If you’re happy in what you’re doing, that’s what life is all about.
What is your advice to other young chefs coming up?
I would always advise a young chef, if he can afford it, to work with the greatest possible chef that he can go with, even if he’s being paid less. And at that point, to learn from that chef, to look at the food that you’re doing there through the eye of the chef, even if it doesn’t coincide with your own taste, it doesn’t really matter. You just say, ‘Yes, chef,’ and you do it. And you work with one chef for a couple of years, and another one, another one maybe for 10 years. And at that time you have a lot of material, and you can show it through your own sense of taste and esthetics.
Everybody was so happy to have you here in Newport at the Wine and Food Festival. Did you get a chance to go around Newport?
Oh, yes, I love Newport. I’ve been there many times. And I am not far from here. My daughter lives in Barrington, Rhode Island, so it’s close, we’ve been there several times. Years ago, we worked every year, I don’t know, for six, seven, eight years for the festival. So I always enjoy it.
I love the wine pairings that you did for the dinner in Newport, especially the Taittinger Rosé, which was heavenly. How did you choose those?
They showed me the venue, and I suggested. [for the Taittinger], it’s a good brand, it’s a very good wine, it’s well balanced.
Basically, I like wine, but not extraordinary wine each time. I hate to go to those tasting menus with 15 dishes, and each time you have to sniff and go with the wine. After two of those, I am fed up [laughs].
I love the nationwide tour that you’re doing. I saw you’ve got a dinner with Tom Colicchio at the end of this month. Can you tell me about pairing up with so many celebrated chefs around the country?
Chef’s are very generous. To be to be a chef, you have to be generous. You have to give a lot of yourself in the cooking. And I see that chefs are the first to propose their time. I used to do that all the time: to work in a restaurant, like 10-12 hours a day, and then on my day off, raise money, or [do something else]. But I never minded it because I enjoyed it.
What is your goal is with “90 for 90?”
The goal of the foundation is to teach people how to cook, to make them aware of the need of culinary education. I feel that in six weeks, I can train someone to cook. I start by asking people if they like to work with their hands.
It’s likely that that person may be the chef five years later in a small restaurant, and at that point, you have redone your life. It’s a very worthy thing to do. I get a lot of gratification from that.
What are a couple of your favorite memories from the dinners you’ve done this year?
Well, the first one was at Gramercy Tavern a couple of weeks ago, and it was incredible. You see the passion, the love, and it was very expensive [laughs].
It was $750 per person!
It was amazing. And it was [sold out]. I am humbled by that type of thing. Then I have Craft with Tom Colicchio at the end of the month, and I know it’s booked also, and I love Tom Colicchio, I know him forever. And next month, yes, I will be in Boston, [where] we have one with Jeremy Sewall—which I love—at Row 34, and Jody Adams, also at La Padrona.
Like so many industries, the food industry was hit very hard during COVID. How do you feel that your foundation will make a difference for those looking to train in the culinary arts?
I think we can make a difference by teaching people the proper technique of cooking.
Mostly it’s people who are kind of being disfranchised with life. So you have a lot of people who come out of jail and former drug addicts and homeless people, and I’ve done some demonstrations to them. And they are really, really grateful, and they really learn. And as we say in our motto, ‘everyone looks the same in the eye of the stove.’
It’s true because when you work with someone, it’s 11 o’clock and at 12 o’clock, you have 100 people sitting down for lunch. You really have to move regardless of the color of your hand. It’s been quite gratifying to see people like that in our time of polarization.
If I had a group of Democrats and a group of Republicans coming to eat at my house, before they start talking and yelling, I say, ‘Okay, let’s have a glass of wine, let’s sit down and eat something together.’ And at that point, of course we have differences, but they seem to be more polished and more sophisticated, and less belligerent.
Why is food literacy so important?
Because you bring people happiness, people save money. People have better health, and we feel good and especially, you bring a family together.
I remember when I was a kid, coming out of school, going home, I was in the kitchen, and there you have the smell of that kitchen. You have the noise of the kitchen, the voice of your mother, your father. And those are very visceral tastes, a visceral memory. It stays with you the rest of your life and becomes very important. The food itself transcends the level of just being nutritionally important. It becomes home, it becomes memory, becomes family, becomes love, it becomes all of that.
I was in a restaurant a couple of days ago, there was a couple there in their 30’s or 40’s, and they had two kids, the four of them are there on their cell phones. No one ever talked to anyone during all that time, and that was terrible. When Claudine—my daughter—was small, we had a dinner every night too, and I did that with my granddaughter. She was three, four, she would come, and I’d say, ‘I need the parsley. Let’s go to the garden.’ Then you sit down at the table with the food you just made, and that extends the conversation. And you talk about school, you talk about other things. So for me, it was very important to communicate.
I’m sure this is probably a question you get a million times. What are some of your recent favorite dishes to make?
Basically, I eat anything you put in front of me. But after all of those years, your metabolism changes [laughs]. Essentially, as a younger chef, I used to put more on the plate, and now I can remove from the plate to be left with something more essential, without too much embellishment. So I still have eggs all the time in one form or another, chicken, and a piece of salmon, simple, I had last night.
What’s a special ingredient for you that you don’t feel people use enough in the kitchen?
Brussels sprouts or artichokes, which I always add on a kilo, these are not used with everyday cooking much.
I had that cookbook that they asked me to do. Those are really very simple stuff I have out of the refrigerator. My tastes are not really challenging in some ways, where I like it simpler, maybe, but I guess it happens to every one of us when you get older.
I love that we all got a copy of your cookbook at the Newport event.
Last question: You cooked so much with your beloved Julia Child. What is your favorite memory of her?
Sharing wine [laughs]. We did 13 series of 26 shows for PBS. So that’s hundreds and hundreds of shows. So at each time we do one of those shows, you have a book. That’s why I have so many books also.
So when we did it with Julia when we decided to cook together, we had no recipe, so it was crazy. Because usually when you do it, you bring at least the manuscript of the book to give to the back kitchen and all that, so they have an idea of what we’re going to do. We decided the day before, let’s do some stews or whatever. And that’s why I think it took three years for that show to come on the air, because people were looking at those show to extrapolate recipes, write it down. It was a reversal of what you do normally, but certainly for me, and I think even for her, it was maybe the easiest way of cooking. I think we had a good time.
That being said, we argued a lot [laughs].
To learn more about the Jacques Pépin Foundation’s work, visit their website, https://www.celebratejacques.org/about/. There, you can also sign up for any of the momentous dinners.