From the struggles of finding fresh mushrooms, his love of Oreos to his beginning as a cook at Le Pavilion, Jacques Pépin describes being a Frenchman in NYC.
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[MUSIC] When I came here I came with a man
with a restaurant in New York, Analyzation. And it was
very easy to come. I got my green card, my
working paper within less than six months in France. I
came on a student boat and eventually took the train
in Montreal and arrived. Arrived in Grand Central with my
two suitcase without speaking much of English. And that man
the day after took me to The Pavilion. He told
me this is the greatest restaurant in New York, probably
in the country, French restaurant. I never heard of The
Pavilion and it was interesting for me the difference with
the Pavilion in France, it was much less vegetable. It
was nothing grilled. Grilled so much American food not with
a broiler. No grill really other than the Pavillion at
the plasat in Paris there was too big grill for
fish and meat. There was very little vegetable. The meat
was superb. Lobster was superb things like that but otherwise
that's what I you know find also my first super
market A new [UNKNOWN], a supermarket. Then take this really
here started in France, 1960, 1959, when we had the
apartment there. And I thought it was a great, great
idea, instead of running all over the place, to have
everything under the same roof, with a lot of box.
Box, box, box with stuff in it that I didn't
know what it was There was no shallot, no leek,
no alternate vegetable, of course I said where are the
mushrooms, they say aisle five, that was can mushrooms. You
aught to go to a specialty store to get mushrooms,
you know, and now you go to stop and shop
you have 15 different type of mushrooms, and most of
them have no taste, but there are 15 different type
of mushroom. When I stopped working at the [UNKNOWN], which
I didn't know at the time. I learned after that
[UNKNOWN] ate food that create a school of cooking. A
French cooking that most of the great restaurants in New
York from [UNKNOWN] to [UNKNOWN] would follow [UNKNOWN] into the
line of the [UNKNOWN] So they, the other, were very
strict and very classic. The outcome here for the World
Fair in 1939, and could not go back to France
because of the war, so they created the Pavillion. And
it was an excellent Pavillion where all the intelligentsia of
New York, the famous people, would go to the Pavillion.
The Pavillon in the you know in the history of
restaurants in New York. Will remain as one of the
founder one of the great restaurant which has created unfortunately
what was called at the time Continental cooking. With a
lot of restaurant and the big menu in France totally
misspelled With bad food, not French, which remember at that
time that was what was called [FOREIGN]. It was no
great Italian restaurant. Italian restaurant that I knew, meatball, spaghetti,
very good. But fancy Italian food did not really exist,
it was another world. At the [FOREIGN] we have some
great dish. [FOREIGN] have really, and again serve it Table
side to have the whole roast chicken. And again at
that time even we have organic chicken coming from the
farm. So we source the place pretty well. And that
was cooked with the bone cooked in a reduction like
a very strong chicken stock. Added champagne to it, shallots,
reduce. Thicken. Finish with cream. And in the juice of
the chicken, itself, we are reduce to a glace diviane,
a pure. And that glace diviane was dribbled on top
of that champagne sauce. And one portion, you would have
the whole chicken brought to the table, certainly. Serve. Carve
On the table side and so forth. So that was
really old classic French food. I worked there as the
chef of the fish department. And after, the sauce, and
eventually I was the sous chef. But that was certainly
a great experience for me. But not really that much
different than what I had done in France. So I
didn't feel different. Now when I went to Howard Johnson,
it was something totally different. I was in New York,
it was 1961, and Kennedy was running for president. So
I was offered the job at the White House, and
I was offered a job at Howard Johnson. But [UNKNOWN]
was the executive chef at the [UNKNOWN] And Mr. Johnson,
who used to come and eat there all the time,
always tell Pierre you're gonna work for me one day.
So we went there. At that time it was a
family restaurant, very excellent product, simple. Now we start working
in production and the beauty of it was that we
could do basically what we wanted. And it was a
great deal of experiment. This is when I first Get
a cookbook. I never had cookbook. I never read recipe.
I never did that type of thing and I start
working in a different way. I had a chemist working
to talk about the specific gravity of the sauce. The
different type of carbohydrate or whatever it was and it
was of course a great learning experience for me And
also learning the American eating habit which I was always
fascinated, too. I mean, when I first came here, I
remember one of the first weekend I went to Pierre's
house in East Hampton. His wife, of French extraction as
well, was born in New York, for breakfast she'd give
me the little box of Rice Krispies. It was in
the box, you made a hole on top, you open
it. I thought that was really, really neat And crunchy
[INAUDIBLE] with milk in it. I love Oreo cookie. I
like Jello very much too. And iceberg lettuce. I love
iceberg lettuce. So that were things which I never had
in France, no. [LAUGH] [MUSIC]
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