Jean-Georges Vongerichten is one busy man. With 15 restaurants around the world—New York City, Las Vegas, Shanghai, Bora Bora, the Bahamas, and Paris—the chef/restaurateur of such renowned restaurants, including the eponymous Jean Georges, Spice Market, and ABC Kitchen, spends a lot of time at work. When he's not managing his restaurants, you'll find him in his country-home kitchen leading the charge. "Business as usual" meant working six days a week for Vongerichten, but that changed a few years ago when he turned 50 and allowed himself an actual two-day weekend. This enabled Vongerichten to rediscover the pleasures of cooking for his wife, Marja, and daughter Chloe, as well as other family members and friends. His latest book,Home Cooking with Jean-Georges: My Favorite Simple Recipes, gives us a peek into his private weekend life, showing how his relaxed style of cooking has proven reinvigorating.
Jean-Georges took the time to speak to us about his Alsatian upbringing, the challenges of running multiple successful restaurants, and a cookbook that changed his life. He also shared three recipes from the book:Fiery Grilled Shrimp with Honeydew Gazpacho,Hot Wings, andBraised Endive with Ham and Gruyère.
Epicurious:Home Cooking with Jean-Georgesis an intimate book. What is it like to cook for your family and friends? And how does it compare with cooking at the restaurant?
Jean-Georges Vongerichten:Cooking at home is easier than cooking in the restaurant, because you don't have to write a menu or try to please everybody. When you do a menu at a restaurant, you have to be the engineer of that menu. It has to be a crowd-pleaser. When you cook at home, you can't just cook something that nobody would eat, but it becomes more fun. Also, there are a lot of dishes that are one-pot meals, so it's easier.
At the restaurant, you have to plate everything and there are many seats to fill, so it's a big challenge and it's much more stressful. You have to have at least 10 appetizers, 10 main courses, and give lots of choices to people. At home, you can go from me, my wife, and my daughter to a party of 12, 15, and sometimes 20, so it becomes much more manageable. Usually when I invite the guests, I know what they like, because they're friends or family. Also, they like you already, so it's easier to put something together. But in a restaurant, you never know who comes in, what the mood will be like. When it's just the family, the cooking becomes very easygoing, so I think it's much more relaxing to cook at home. The idea is to simplify: I don't want it to be distressing, and nobody has any expectations. At home you can do some flops and it's okay!
Epi:Before you had your daughter Chloe and two-day weekends, what were your family meals like?
JGV:We were going out all the time. When I took only one day off, I usually went out and tried somebody else's food, so there was not much in terms of a "family meal." That's the reason I didn't do this kind of cooking, because it was really about the restaurant or going out to visit friends in their restaurants. Now, I cook six meals at home. Cooking for a small group is what I love to do. It's a relaxing weekend, you just do it for a few people, and then you get a reaction, some feedback. Nobody's paying, so there's no pressure. For me, it's therapeutic.
And then my wife, Marja, cooks as well. She has the show,Kimchi Chronicles,and the companion cookbook,The Kimchi Chronicles: Korean Cooking for an American Kitchen, as well. She's my new competition! She'll cook one meal, I'll cook the other, or sometimes we cook together. I believe that when you have a family and when you have friends, everything goes around the table. People are driving out to come to our house and they want to be pampered. They want to be relaxed as well, so it's very easygoing.
Epi:As a busy chef and restaurateur, how do you balance your time between the kitchen and the office?
JGV:在早上九点我开始在我的办公室在全音阶o. I think as a chef and restaurateur that you have to take care of your business. Otherwise you're only as good as your last meal. You have to watch if your food costs are too high, or you could be out of business in no time. You have to look at sales, how many people are dining there: You have to price yourself correctly, and you have to be a place that's eaten enjoyed every day and every week and not viewed as a special-occasion place.
I mean, I love it. That's why I'm doing it. But it's not the most lucrative, and you have to work long hours and you have to watch everything, and you have to deal with everything. People are really surprised how fragile restaurants are. You have to really keep on top of the game with the best food and best prices. So we like cities like New York, because people dine out six, seven times a week. Tourists, too. But I don't know how restaurants manage to be successful outside the city. But I love it, so that's what I do. So three hours of rotation in the morning, and then by noon, I'm at the restaurant.
Pancakes changed my life
in terms of breakfast.
Epi:You have two older children who are in the business. Did you try to encourage them or dissuade them?
JGV:I tried to pull them away. I told my son Cedric [at Perry St] when he was 18, "You have to be a doctor or lawyer." I mean, something where you can be home every night. Don't do what I do, because it's not really a life. It's very difficult. He has to work when people are having fun, and he works five, six days a week. He's never home before midnight. My daughter now is in Paris getting her MBA in hospitality management. I wanted to push them away to something else, but they're hooked.
Epi:What do you hope to impart to Chloe through your experiences as a chef/restaurateur?
JGV:Kids choose no matter what you tell them. My father was in the coal and heating business, and he wanted me to take over his business, and I resented every moment of it. So I would never force my kids to do what I do. If they want to follow, there's room and there are enough opportunities for them to do things. Chloe's 11. She wants to deal with animals and she wants to save the planet with animals, but who knows what she wants to do.
Epi:What is your fondest memory of eating with your family as you were growing up?
JGV:I learned discipline and timing. My mother cooked for the family, and it was still the time where people were living three generations under the same roof. The grandparents, the parents, the kids, and there were a couple of workers there, so it was a big meal for lunch. At my time, there were like 20, so we were always cooking something, because we had to feed so many people. The whole family was very disciplined. Lunchtime was 12:30 p.m., so if you arrived at 1 p.m., there would be nothing left. At nighttime as well: 7:30 p.m. was dinner, and if you'd played with your friends and came home a little late, there wouldn't be much left. Back then, they put a big dish on the table with cabbage, potato, roast pork, whatever—everything was in the same pot, and everybody served themselves. It was a family-style way of eating, which I miss now, and I'm going back to that. In the restaurant business, mostly everything is plated, so I'm really trying to go back to eating the way I grew up. So I learned to be disciplined because of my parents.
Epi:Do you replicate this way of cooking now with your own family?
JGV:Yes. It's something I'm trying to teach to Chloe. There are too many kids that don't even talk anymore, they're too busy with electronics like these iPhones, iPods, BlackBerrys. That's not communicating and talking to each other. Having a family meal is probably the last thing we can do together where we can just talk and share and get together for a couple of hours.
On weekends, there are a lot of kids, and the kids like each other, so everybody sits. If they can only sit and stay 30, 40 minutes, it's fine. At least they understand the value of family and sharing meals, and things like not just going to the fridge anytime you want. Everybody sits down, and we share some time and stay away from electronics for a little bit. Yeah, it's good.
The family's been doing this for five or six years, and the kids don't want to miss anything. We have fun discussions, and we try to make the food delicious and taste good. It's nice to hear that everybody looks forward to the weekends. We're passing it on as well, keeping that family tradition. And that's what the book is about. We do things together, and for me that's what food is about: It's about sharing and caring, and a way of family and customs. In my restaurant, we have a family, too, but it's just very different because you need to be more prepared and more ready. It's actually very different in the country.
Epi:正如你提到的,你和马里加生产The Kimchi Chronicles, a Korean culinary show this past summer. Korean food is trendy in a few big U.S. cities, but is it ready for its big moment?
JGV:It's good timing. I met my wife about 12 years ago. The first time she brought kimchi home, I was at home that night. I opened the fridge to get a yogurt, and the smell was like somebody had died in my fridge. I was like "God, what is this?!" I mean, I'd had Korean barbecue, but I never had a Tupperware full of kimchi. But now I love it: I eat it several times a week. It's so healthy for you, its so delicious. I'm really addicted to it. So, every family meal, we always have a little. Even if we cook some French dishes, she breaks out the kimchi and puts it in the middle of the table, and it works with everything! I mean, I grew up in Alsace, so sauerkraut is familiar to me.
Is it the next big cuisine? It's difficult to say because for me. I'd say for my wife's cooking, her inspiration is her roots. My inspiration comes from my travels. I think food becomes very personal—not just for me but for many chefs around the world. People are looking back to where they're from and are trying to find their roots, and I think the best cooking today comes from people who are passionate about it, but also as well as the people finding their home now. I think food more and more becomes the way everybody has his own passion and his own whatever, like my wife is all about Korea blended with American food, so I think she found her niche.
Epi:Which chefs do you admire?
JGV:哦,他们每一个人。我真是佩服大家who's in this business, because culinary arts is one of the hardest businesses to be in. It's also very rewarding, because you look at somebody eating, and they're smiling. It's hard, and we go through a lot of things. And today everybody's a critic. But it's all good. There used to be a lot of people in the business who didn't belong; today, they can't do that anymore. You have to be a professional who can deliver something good to the table. With today's politics, farmers' markets, and people's expectations for the best ingredients, there's no reason for mediocre food. It should all be good.
Epi:Do you have any favorite cookbooks?
JGV:I love all my old cookbooks. I really like to get something special from the old books, because I feel like today we have more ingredients readily available to us. I love cooking from Julia Child. But I will state that Marion Cunningham'sThe Breakfast Bookis my favorite of all, because I learned to cook breakfast in America.
Breakfast in France is like butter and jam on a croissant, so I really learned to enjoy breakfast here. I think she has the best breakfast book. The buttermilk pancakes served in my restaurants are from her cookbook. I've been making these pancakes for 22 years! That's my favorite American cookbook because I love breakfast so much. It's become my favorite meal.
Epi:In your new book, your brunch chapter is quite excellent.
JGV:You can see I'm passionate about breakfast and brunch at home. And eggs! Although, pancakes changed my life in terms of breakfast. I mean, every other book is inspiring, of course, from the new ones to the old ones, but this one…I don't know how to eat breakfast without it!
Photos: John Kernick. Courtesy of Random House.
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