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‘My cuisine . . .’ ‘My cooking . . .’ ‘My kitchen . . .’ ‘My cooks . . .’ ‘My approach to food . . .’

You’ve heard that before. I do it all the time. So it’s striking to talk with Thomas Keller, to listen to this quiet, surprisingly modest man describe his restaurant as an institution – not as a personal enterprise or as the spawn of his own personal genius. Here’s the guy whose cookbook is widely seen as the ultimate in food porn. Upon the mention of the chef’s name, other chefs – no matter how great – become strangely silent, uncomfortable-looking, even frightened. In a subculture where most of us are all too happy to slag anybody at any time, you never hear anyone – even the French – talk trash about Keller. (One Frenchman, I believe, even called him the ‘greatest French chef in the world.’)

What’s missing from all the wild praise of Keller, his cooks, his restaurant, and his cookbook is how different he is. You can’t honestly use terms like the best or better or even perfect when you’re talking about Thomas Keller, because he’s not really competing with anybody. He’s playing a game whose rules are known only to him. He’s doing things most chefs would never attempt – in ways unthinkable to most. Everything about him and the French Laundry experience is different from most fine dining experiences; and Keller himself is a thing apart, a man hunting much bigger game, with very different ambitions than most of his peers.

Talking with the man as he walked through a small farm that grows him vegetables, watching his chef de cuisine pull baby leeks and garlic right out of the ground for that night’s dinner – and later, as he showed us around the grounds of the French Laundry after dinner, when he sat with us in the dark garden, sipping an after-work glass of wine – it was evident how unusual his priorities are and to what lengths he is willing to go to attain them. The building itself looks like an unassuming country home, rustic-looking wood and stone, surrounded by green fields, farmlands, and vineyards in the small community of Yountville in the Napa Valley. There are two stories, an upstairs deck with a plain wooden balustrade, and a pretty garden. The decor, like the service, is unassuming, comfortably casual, with everything – the room, the wait staff, the view of the hills outside the windows and through the French doors – conspiring to put the diner at ease. The service, though relentlessly sharp and efficient, is not stiff or intimidating. The waiters are neither too friendly nor too distant.

‘It looks like France,’ said Eric, gazing out the window. For Keller, the French Laundry is a cause. It is the culmination of a philosophy shared by the people who work with him. Every detail is inseparable from the whole, whether it’s new steps to the porch or a new dish on the menu. He brought up the famous Taillevent in Paris as an example of the kind of place he aspires to leave behind someday. ‘You don’t know the chef’s name at Taillevent, do you? No. It’s the restaurant you remember – the institution. The tradition.’ Though he’s a legendary perfectionist, lives next door to his kitchen, and takes a hands-on approach to every tiny detail, what he has created in Yountville is a place inseparable from its community and suppliers, where the absolute best ingredients are treated with the highest degree of respect.

Think I’m exaggerating? Maybe I’ve gone over to the dark side – flacking for a chef I hope will someday throw me a freebie, maybe blurb my next book? No, you haven’t seen how he handles fish, gently laying it down on the board and caressing it, approaching it warily, respectfully, as if communicating with an old friend.

Maybe you’ve heard some of the stories. That he used to make his cooks climb up into the range hoods each day to scrub out the grease personally. How he stores his fish belly-down, in the swimming position. That every fava bean in his kitchen is peeled raw (never soaked). How his mise-en-place, his station prep, is always at an absolute minimum