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The French Laundry is in Yountville in Napa Valley and Per Se is on Columbus Circle in New York. Both have three Michelin stars and both are run by Thomas Keller. These are the two restaurants the book is about.
It documents them as they are today, after the kitchen in Yountville was rebuilt from the ground up in the mid-2010s, and includes the garden across the road where a large proportion of the vegetables are grown. The photographer is Deborah Jones, who has photographed all of Keller's books.
The central subject is repetition. What actually happens to a dish when it is cooked 10,000 times by people who are not allowed to make mistakes, and what is required organisationally to make that possible. It is a narrower subject than it sounds and at the same time a considerably larger one.
If you have The French Laundry Cookbook from 1999, this is the continuation, more than 20 years later and with a different kind of reflection. If you do not have it, start there. This is the Keller title you buy last, not first.
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 400
Language: English
First published: 2020
