An uphill climb to culinary greatness

"I always had a passion for eating－and for good ingredients," says renowned chef Eric Ripert who details his rise in his memoir.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Ripert knows well what it's like to be that guy at the kitchen station - any station. "32 Yolks" refers to his disastrous first day at La Tour d'Argent, his first job out of culinary school. He was asked to mince some shallots; he sliced his finger open on the first one. Then he was asked to take 32 yolks and make a hollandaise sauce. He bombed. Then he was asked to fetch some chervil. He had no idea what it looked like.

Two weeks later, he hoisted a three-foot tall pot of boiling water and lost control. When he removed his socks, his scalded skin peeled off with them. He was sent home for a three-week recovery, but hobbled back a week later with swollen feet to show his dedication.

And worse was to come. Ripert's next boss, culinary wizard Joel Robuchon, was obsessed with earning a third Michelin star, and worked his staff to unbearable extremes; once, he asked them to peel every single pea individually, to remove a tiny sprout inside. "I saw a few guys punch the walls," Ripert writes of his time there. "Some guys suffered crippling anxiety attacks."

Ripert also writes with frankness of his childhood - of happy years with his father before his parents divorced, and unhappy times afterward with his stepfather, who bullied him, made his home life hell, and sent him to boarding school, where a priest made advances on him. Throughout, food saved him: He ended up at culinary school, which launched his career.

Ripert was in his 20s when he got the offer to go to Washington and work for French chef Jean-Louis Palladin at the Watergate Hotel (the book ends here). We have to ask, was it finally smooth sailing?

Hardly, Ripert laughs.

"I didn't speak English," he says. "And I guess I had an ego, and the naive idea that America was the continent of the burgers, and I was coming to save the world. I expected a red carpet. That was a rude awakening." Things got so tough, he thought of going home.

But he stayed, and in 1991, he was summoned to New York by Gilbert LeCoze at Le Bernardin. Three years later, LeCoze died, and Ripert took over as head chef. The rest is culinary history, and Ripert sees no end coming soon.

"Passion never goes away," he says. "I'll be here for a long time."