The Apprentice: My Life In The Kitchen is an autobiography of a French chef turned American culinary authority is a great read. Pepin grew up in war-torn
France and from practically puberty on was in the kitchen cooking for his mother’s restaurant.
Thus began a life devoted to food and the culinary arts.
We read about how Pepin goes through the grueling apprenticeship process in Parisian restaurants and somehow makes it through despite self doubts and a tendency for clowning that was sometimes very risky in the face of a strict hierarchical system
But as charming as the stories around his childhood and apprenticeship are, things get even more interesting once Pepin is drafted. Due to some great luck, he ends up as the chef for DeGaul. After working for the president for a number of years, he comes back to
Paris but eventually gets bored and comes to
America, and that is where things really start to get interesting. Pepin gets to be friends with some very notary people of the time, a time when gourmets and gourmands were still a very rare bird in this the
US. Such people as Jim Beard, Craig Claiborne, Julia Child, and many others were personal friends and colleagues of Peppin’s and we get to hear inside stories about all of them.
Peppin’s career, once in the
US, explored many different paths. He managed a popular restaurant that brought French bistro food to the New York City masses, worked in the management of Howard Johnson’s when it was all about serving mass-produced but high-quality meals, he gave personal and group lessons, he worked in television, wrote books, administered cooking programs at Boston University, and much more. The story is not just about a very successful chef expanding his career, but of a French cook trained in the French style and then being flung into the freewheeling U.S. and learning to not only survive but to thrive. To take the freedom and lack of formality and new foods and regional cuisines and running with them.
Although the French are often maligned by xenophobes here as being stuck up, snobby, and rude, Peppin seems the opposite of these. He applauds Claiborne’s culinary egalitarianism, he bemoans the lack of a decent number of African American chefs at cooking schools or kitchens, he admires all the different cuisines the
U.S. has to offer, rather than pooh-poohing anything that is not haute cuisine. He recognizes the cooking of women in
France as better in many ways than the very male-dominated system of chefs that populate the finer Michelin-starred restaurants. Peppin’s sense of humor and optimism shine throughout, even in the face of seemingly tragic events that might have ended his career if not his life. One also gets to hear his love of food and cooking throughout – so many events are talked about and always the food is described in such detail and excitement.
If you like to cook, love good food, or just a good story, The Apprentice – My Life in the Kitchen is a great read. I actually listened to the unabridged audio book version of this book, which is unabridged and read by Michel Chevalier, who does an excellent job.
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