Dishing on Julia Is Back Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody. It's Kerry Diamond here from Radio Cherry Bombe. Some of you know I'm hosting another podcast these days, the Dishing on Julia companion podcast for the Max original series, “Julia.” The show is back for another season, and I am so excited. So today we're sharing my latest Dishing on Julia episode. My guests are the show's creator, Daniel Goldfarb, and a real French chef, Eric Ripert of La Bernardin in New York City. I loved talking to both of them and chatting all things Julia Child. Enjoy our conversation and we'll be back with new episodes of Radio Cherry Bombe very soon.
Alice Neiman:
It would be great having Julia back. Can't believe how much I miss her.
Kerry Diamond:
Welcome to Dishing on Julia, the official companion podcast of “Julia,” the Max original series inspired by the life of Julia Child. It is so nice to be back. I'm your host Kerry Diamond and I'm the founder of Cherry Bombe Magazine and the Radio Cherry Bombe podcast where I report on some of the most interesting women in the world of food, including trailblazers just like Julia.
Alice Neiman:
You have no idea what it's been like here without you, one girl in a sea of men. Julia, we have so much work to do.
Kerry Diamond:
Season two of “Julia” is officially underway and for the next several weeks, I'll be dishing with creatives from the show, as well as special guests to give us a little perspective and food for thought. We'll be kicking things off with “Julia” creator and executive producer Daniel Goldfarb. Daniel will tell us why change is a central theme this season, who the new cast members are and what it was like shooting on location in Provence and Paris.
Julia Child:
Yes. We still have a book to write and Judith will be here in a few days. I've been a lotus eater all spring intoxicated by France.
Kerry Diamond:
Today's other guest is Chef Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin in New York City, one of the most celebrated and respected chefs around. Like Julia, Eric is a bestselling author and his latest book, his eighth, is titled Seafood Simple. Eric actually met Julia several times and is going to share some of his memories including that time Julia had some very interesting feedback after eating at Le Bernardin.
WGBH Producer:
You're absolutely right, that French chef of yours is really something.
Kerry Diamond:
If you haven't watched episode one yet, my advice is to check it out before you listen to these interviews. Just as too many cooks spoil the broth, I do not want to spoil Julia for you. For those who need a refresher, season one of Julia ended with Simca Beck, Julia's co-author with whom she has a love-hate relationship, inviting Julia to Provence where they can cook together and work on the follow-up to their bestselling book, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Simca is played wonderfully by Isabella Rossellini and Julia, of course, is played by Sarah Lancashire, who I'm sure you agree does an incredible job of embodying the icon. Well, Julia has taken Simca on her offer. Season two opens with the two of them in a picturesque farmer's market. They cook together at Simca's home and work on the book, but old issues resurface.
Julia wants to update French classics for the modern American housewife, while Simca wants to go the traditional route. Undeterred, Julia brings Simca to a restaurant run by a young Paul Bocuse, a real life French chef who influenced an entire generation of culinary superstars. Julia is enthralled by his Loup en Croute, which is a filet piece of fish steamed inside a brioche crust and plated tableside, in this case with a simple tomato and shallot sauce. To Simca, this fish dish served with no butter or cream is bland and uninteresting. To Julia, the simplicity is new and daring.
Simca Beck:
All that theater for her piece of steamed fish. If this is the future, Julia, count me out.
Kerry Diamond:
Meanwhile, back in the States, life somehow goes on without Julia. Avis DeVoto played by Bebe Neuwirth has a new job. Blanche Knopf played by Judith Light is pretty wretched to Judith Jones, played by Fiona Glascott and Alice Naman played by Brittany Bradford continues to fight the boys club.
Hunter Fox:
Why are you smiling? We're an endangered species, Ralph, old boy.
WGBH Producer:
We played golf with the boss twice a month. We're fine.
Hunter Fox:
The winds of change smell like Chanel Number Five, fellas.
Kerry Diamond:
Now let's welcome our first guest, Daniel Goldfarb, the creator and executive producer of “Julia.” And since we haven't really spoken at all in the 72 days since you've been gone, any tiny hints you can give me about what you're thinking for season two. Daniel Goldfarb, welcome back to Dishing on Julia.
Daniel Goldfarb:
It's so nice to be back.
Kerry Diamond:
All right, so season two is back. This is a big question, but how is season two different from season one?
Daniel Goldfarb:
It's a good question. I think the heart of the show hasn't really changed and the point of view of the world and the aspirational optimism of Julia is still very much a part of the show, but the show has expanded. When we started season one, we were really focused on Julia and slowly over the course of the season we became more and more invested in the other characters in the show, but now I feel we're invested in all of them as much as we are in Julia and now all of them have adventures to go on that somehow through their interactions with Julia has awoken each and every one of them in new and exciting ways. So the show has expanded in that way. It's still Julia, but you really get to go on adventures with all of the characters.
And then in terms of Julia herself, she's in a different position than she was a year ago. She has the things she wanted and she has some clout and some power and she has to figure out what to do with it and it's more complicated than she thinks it is. She makes some mistakes in season two and she's learning in a different way. She's not learning how to make a television show the way she was learning in season one, but she's learning now how to handle being a public figure, both with her near and dear and with people at work and with the world at large.
Kerry Diamond:
Any new characters or historical figures that we can look forward to in season two?
Daniel Goldfarb:
Yeah, we have a bunch, so we have some new sort of recurring characters. We have a love interest for Avis. The actor's name is Danny Burstein. The character's name is Stanley Lipschitz and he won the Tony Ward last year for Moulin Rouge and he's a Broadway legend, but there's a new director at WGBH at the end of season one. Hunter talks about hiring some more women and Rachel Bloom plays that part and she's just incredible and it was great to get to know her. James Beard comes back and John Updike comes back. We have some others.
I think the audience got such a kick out of it last season that we leaned into it more this season, but I don't want to give them away. But we have some really, really fun historical characters show up in episode one and we got Stockard Channing is with us and Hannah Einbinder is with us and just we have really, really some... And if you love New York theater, we have all these amazing New York theater actors that pop up in every episode, so lots to look forward to in that way.
Kerry Diamond:
Season two is a treat for the theater nerds just like season one was. Well, you are a theater baby. You told me something so interesting that I hadn't put together. You said as a playwright you spend a lot of time writing interior scenes of people talking to each other.
Daniel Goldfarb:
Yes, so it's my natural impulse to do interior scenes and it's also very, very Julia. When you think of Julia, you think of her at a restaurant, you think of her in a kitchen, in her kitchen especially, or on the French Chef set. So it's something that our directors, they get the scripts and they're always looking at them and trying to figure out how do we get outside and then especially-
Kerry Diamond:
And you're trying to keep everyone inside around a table.
Daniel Goldfarb:
Yeah, and then especially when we were in France. So the first three episodes are shot in France and it was so gorgeous and we just wanted to show France, so we did a few cheats. When we go to Paul Bocuse's restaurant, it's an outdoor restaurant, so it was not an outdoor restaurant, but we made it an outdoor restaurant so we could show the majesty because we were at Cap d'Antibes and it was so incredible. We tried to find ways of taking interior scenes and making them exterior scenes.
Kerry Diamond:
Even though they are sitting around a table, there's nothing stationary or static about those scenes.
Daniel Goldfarb:
Well, we have Christine Tobin, our food stylist, and we have the food, so there's always these incredible shots of the food and then John Dunn who's costumed everyone so colorfully and so vibrantly, who really took his cue from Julia and is really going wild with color, all the characters. And the characters are full of life. When you do the research about Julia and Julia and Paul, they really did live life to the fullest and were loud and joyful and witty and effervescent. So it's never just like people sitting at a table on their phone checking. So it's people really engaged and it's people talking not from the neck up that are just with their whole bodies feeling things. And so I agree, I don't think it does feel stationary even when it is.
Kerry Diamond:
When we spoke about season one, you told me about “Amadeus” and how much that movie meant to you and that that was a real guiding light for what you did with the first season. Was there anything that was a guide for you for season two?
Daniel Goldfarb:
So I would say we leaned into that even more so. “Amadeus” is a play that was turned into an academy award-winning movie by Peter Shaffer about Mozart. It's about his relationship with Salieri who was at the time the most famous composer in the world and now here we are all these years later and no one knows who Salieri is and everyone knows who Mozart is. And Peter Shaffer had the idea of why is that? So he did a lot of research and he invented a story about Mozart's relationship with Salieri.
A lot of people say, "Well, it's not true, that's not what happened." But then when he was interviewed, when the movie came out, he said, "The way history is recorded isn't necessarily the way it happened, and I did a lot of research and I stand by this. I stand by that this could have happened. I'm not saying it did happen, but I think the psychological truth of it has integrity and I stand by the choices I made." So we felt like, so if Amadeus is the fable version of Mozart's life, we always say we're doing the Amadeus version of Julia's life, but we're hoping the bright, magical story we're telling is true to the heart and soul of Julia, even if it's not true literally to biographical events in her timeline. Chris sometimes talks about the show being a fable about Julia Child.
Kerry Diamond:
Chris Kaiser.
Daniel Goldfarb:
Chris Kaiser, who's my partner on all of this. And the truth is we have access to a lot of information about Julia and we've absorbed a lot of it. I've read multiple biographies, I've read multiple interviews, I've watched all of the French chef, I've seen a lot of her talk show appearances and everything we do on the show is rooted in that research and everything we do in the show could have happened, though didn't necessarily happen as we've dramatized it.
Kerry Diamond:
That's a real fine line you have to walk, though, between fact and fiction and some people come to the show expecting it to be a documentary.
Daniel Goldfarb:
Right, and they shouldn't. But the truth is, now that I've done it and I've watched a bunch, I don't think we're any different than “The Crown.” I don't think we're any different than a lot of shows that are based on historical figures. To Sarah Lancashire's credit, she's not doing an impersonation, she's doing an embodiment. Because we've slowed the story down, each season takes place... Season two takes place, I think, over half a year. Season one takes place over a year. So we have eight hours to tell one year of her life. Most biopics are an hour and 45 minutes and they tell a 30-year story. We don't have to just hit the sort of landmark moments of her life. We can talk about the moments that aren't in the biographies but that are inspired by what we read in the biographies.
Kerry Diamond:
And I think that's part of what makes Julius so satisfying because those biopics make me crazy that they try to cram a whole life into two hours.
Daniel Goldfarb:
Right. And the truth is when I pitched “Julia,” season two ends where we thought we were going to end season one, so we ended up slowing it down even more. Originally, we were just going to skip after episode two where they do the pilot episode to the show being a hit already. And then we realized, no, no, no, them figuring it out is part of the fun and building the set, learning how to prep, all of that stuff is how the sausage gets made of it and seeing them in the editing room and seeing them in post-production and seeing them brainstorming and scripting and that all became part of the fabric of the show and we had a lot of fun with it and we didn't go any further in season two. We thought maybe we would go beyond what we originally thought, but we didn't. So we're ending season two where we thought we were going to end season one.
Kerry Diamond:
I remember last season Melanie Mayron describing the cooking scenes as the closest thing you have to a car crash.
Daniel Goldfarb:
Yeah, and the insert shots. They're hard to film. They take real time to get them right. Now I'm actually so conscious every time I watch anything, not just Julia, whenever a character is eating, how many takes, how many setups are there and then I just start thinking, "Oh my God, that person ate 12 hamburgers to shoot this scene." You become really aware of how eating scenes are shot because that's such a huge part of our show and our actors have to prep for it. In episode two, I think, they go to the green market and Judith buys some cheese and she's tasting the cheese. And we shot that scene 20, 30 times and I started physically feeling sick and I was literally worried about Fiona because when we rehearsed it, it was funny that she ate so much cheese and I was like, "But wait a minute, we're going to have to shoot this a lot. Are you sure you want to take that many bites of cheese?" And then she went for it, which was great. She felt it, I think, literally for days.
Kerry Diamond:
Would love to talk to you about something more serious about the show. The fictionalizes parts of Julia's life while drawing parallels to contemporary cultural themes. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? We're watching this period piece, but it feels very modern in terms of these themes you're touching on.
Daniel Goldfarb:
I think if you're going to tell a period piece, you want it to feel modern. You don't want the show to feel like it could have been written and made in the time that it takes place. You want it to feel like it's a 2023 lens looking back at a time. You're going to have a show and you're going to get to say something to the world. You're going to have eight hours to say something. What do you want to say? And then think about that, what you want to put out in the world and then figure out how Julia can put that out in the world. When we open our writer's room, Chris is brilliant, our whole team of writers, they're all really, really brilliant, interesting people and we spend a month just talking and talking about the world through the lens of Julia, but all the changes taking place in the 60s.
We obviously talk a lot about marriage. We talk a lot about the women's movement. We talk about a lot of social justice movements that were happening in the 60s. We talked about aging, we talked about celebrity, we talked about public television. And then we were talking about what was going on in the world right now. We have a birth control storyline that I'm really proud of, but we were definitely thinking about the Supreme Court and Roe v Wade and all of that was on our minds and weighing on us and we wanted to somehow write about what we were feeling through the lens of these pre-Roe characters. So that's an example, but that's, I think, the most exciting part about writing a period piece, which is using that time period as a lens to talk about the world that you're actually experiencing in the present.
Kerry Diamond:
So in the show you talked about slowing things down, but the world intrudes, there's so much change going on in the world around Julia and Paul and their friends and the crew and everyone. Talk about change. That's such a big theme in season two.
Daniel Goldfarb:
Yes, for sure. I mean before we opened our writer's room, I went to LA and Chris and I spent a week together just talking. We had, again, lots of biographical information that we knew we wanted to do. We wanted to do the White House and we wanted to do this dinner party, that's the second episode, and we wanted to do the Loup en Croute all from the research, but then it was like, "What are we saying? What is the show about? What is the theme?" And the theme couldn't be the same theme as the themes that we were exploring in season one. And we thought about the 60s and we thought about change and we thought Julia's arc, it's a slightly more interior arc than it was last year because it really is Julia navigating change. And on the one hand she wants to be on the side of change and on the other hand, she likes things the way they are and she doesn't want things to change and change is scary.
And she goes back and forth over the course of the season, which to what I was saying earlier in terms of her being conflicted and her not always being right about everything is, I think, very human and I think makes her even more lovable. And then ultimately, she comes to a decision about change and I'm sure you can probably guess where she lands on it, but that became the arc of the season and because that time in this country was a time of so much change, it was really easy to use everything that's going on in the world, again, through the lens of Julia and her little coterie.
Kerry Diamond:
I love the scene when she and Simca go to the Paul Bocuse restaurant and Julia orders the Loup en Croute, the famous fish dish, and I felt like you were making such a statement about the old and the new, and somehow the Loup en Croute represented change and change that Julia was ready to embrace and Simca was not.
Daniel Goldfarb:
That's exactly right. In the research we discovered that Julia and Simca went to Paul Bocuse's first restaurant, before he was in Lyon, before he was a Michelin three star chef and probably the most famous chef in the world and one of the fathers of nouvelle cuisine. He had a small restaurant in Nice. It is less grand than the way we've dramatized it and it wasn't outdoors. That's where that comes from and Julia whose mastering is so rooted in traditional French cooking and all of a sudden she tries something and it's new and it's different and it's lighter. The preparation is different, the sauce is different, the experience is different, it's visually different and it's really exciting to her.
But it also puts her in a little bit of a crisis, which is like, "Simca, we do this thing, but food is changing and it's moving and what do we do? Do we hold on to the Escoffier model of the way it's been done for a hundred years or do we move forward and do we embrace the creativity and the ingenuity of someone like Paul Bocuse?" It's in the first episode and that becomes the metaphor for the whole season. It is a really important moment in the show and a really important moment for Julia.
Kerry Diamond:
That's a lot to put on one fish dish, Daniel. We've talked about a lot of the fun things when it comes to making Julia. You did have to deal with the heat wave while you were over in France.
Daniel Goldfarb:
Yes, when we got to France it was 110 degrees every day. It was the COVID capital of the world at that time. The most gorgeous French chateau you've ever seen that we shot in did not have air conditioning. The cicadas were so definitely loud. We were worried that we were going to have to an ADR loop entire scenes, but somehow it all just looks... It was idyllic, it was magical.
Kerry Diamond:
But were you freaking out before you headed over there? Were you looking at your weather app nonstop, like, "I cannot believe this?"
Daniel Goldfarb:
There were things I just didn't think about. I just assumed there was air conditioning in the house. You know what I mean? There were things that I thought, "Oh, it'll be hot. Who cares? We'll be fine." It's summer clothes, it takes place in the summer. But it was oppressively hot. We had a limited number of days in France and then we had to get back to Boston. The scheduling of that was really tricky, but we got pretty lucky and we made it. We did it. So that was nerve wracking, especially at the beginning. That never occurred to us that we would be in this hotspot and then in France, that was just a little bit stressful, but somehow we got lucky and we made it through.
Kerry Diamond:
I absolutely love episode one. What is your favorite moment?
Daniel Goldfarb:
So I think my favorite moment is when Julia tastes the Loup en Croute. You talked about how we spoke about Amadeus last year and that's what we wrote right into the script that when she tastes it's like when Salieri hears Mozart for the first time. And the way Melanie directs it, like the camera spins around her and it gets really close on her face and you just see the world has changed for her and it's just such an incredible performance. Sarah is so wonderful in it. It feels deep and profound and it's really funny also because she's eating a piece of fish and somehow she conveys all of it in that moment and I think encapsulates the whole season, in a way, in that one moment. So I love that moment.
Kerry Diamond:
Last question. Julia's coming over for dinner, what would you make her?
Daniel Goldfarb:
So the thing that I've been making a lot recently, and I think Julia would like, it's one of the New York Times sheet pan recipes. Sheet pan chicken with jammy tomatoes or something it's called, but it's so beautiful and we have this plate with lemons. Anyway, I think Julia would really like it. The flavors are very Provence and we serve it with a baguette with salted french butter and we serve it with a nice simple salad. And I feel like Julia would love that. I got to meet, because of you, Claudia Fleming and I've made her chocolate caramel tart, which it's doable. I thought it was going to be impossible and I got it first time out. I think Julia would like that, chocolate caramel tart.
Kerry Diamond:
Claudia Fleming, one of the country's most famous pastry chefs. She's fabulous. Daniel, thank you so much. Season two is delightful. I'm so thrilled you're all back.
Daniel Goldfarb:
Oh, thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll be talking to Daniel again later in the season. Next up, an actual French chef and one of the most respected around. It's Eric Ripert of New York City's Le Bernardin, which has received countless accolades over the years, including three Michelin stars. Eric joins me to talk about his most memorable encounter with Julia and we chat about his specialty and his brand new cookbook, “Seafood Simple.” Eric Ripert, welcome to Dishing on Julia.
Eric Ripert:
Thank you very much for having me.
Kerry Diamond:
Eric, let's jump right in. Everyone knows Julia Child as the French chef, but you are an actual French chef. Can we verify that?
Eric Ripert:
Yes, I am actually, yes, raised in France and did my studies in France.
Kerry Diamond:
Where did you grow up?
Eric Ripert:
I was born in Antibes. I grew up most of my childhood in the French Riviera, Provence. When I was age 11, my mother moved to Andorra, which is a small country between France and Spain. Then I did my culinary school at 15 in Perpignan, the south of France, moved to Paris after graduation. I was 17 and started my career in La Tour d'Argent in 1982 when they were celebrating 400-year anniversary of the restaurant.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you say 400?
Eric Ripert:
400.
Kerry Diamond:
That's incredible. Let's go back a little bit. When did you know you wanted to be a chef?
Eric Ripert:
My entire life I wanted to be the chef that I am today. Age four or five, I was passionate by eating good food, of course, and always in the kitchen of my mother and grandmothers, very different style of cooking. I had a grandmother from the north part of Italy and one from Provence cooking soul food from their own region. And my mom was extremely influenced by nouvelle cuisine and the generation of chefs like Paul Bocuse and Michel Guerard. And I was eating those very elaborate meals at home where my mother, who was actually a business lady, was waking up at 5:00 AM in the morning to make sure that we have a lunch and a dinner with appetizer, main course and dessert that were different every day of the week.
It's really tough to do that, but I had the passion for eating and then later on I had the passion for cooking and I wanted to be the chef that I am today, the chef of Le Bernardin. I wanted to have a beautiful dining room with a lot of waiters to create an experience, of course a beautiful kitchen with all the equipment, all the most beautiful products that you can find and a lot of cooks everywhere to be able to work with me as a team and create the vision that I have and it happened.
Kerry Diamond:
So 15, you go to culinary school, 17, you go to Paris and start working in kitchens there. I'm imagining kitchens back then in Paris were not easy places.
Eric Ripert:
No, it was very tough, especially in fine dining. Well, I think everywhere the kitchens were a very difficult world. It was a lot of verbal abuse, a lot of physical abuse, being kicked in a butt and they will punch you in the shoulders and throw plates at you and things like that. And glorifying basically abuse, which is a huge mistake and not acceptable at all. But at that time, it was almost glorified and chefs were small dictators that could do whatever they want and terrify the stuff. And the philosophy supposedly was we're going to take young people, we're going to break them psychologically and bring champions in them. In that process we were losing so much talent. When you think about it, it doesn't make any sense and it's no excuse for having an abusive attitude in any place.
Kerry Diamond:
What you described sounds like the military and you did do military service.
Eric Ripert:
Yes, military service actually felt like a vacation, although I didn't really understand the purpose of what I was doing with them, which was to clean one side of the plaza where we had leaves in the fall and bring them to the right side and then bring them back to the left side or carry stones in my bag. That I didn't really understand, but the military were very, very rigid and tough, but they were not abusive. It was a lot of discipline. I didn't see any officer being abusive. It was tough, but again, structured. In a kitchen, it was tough, but it was not necessarily a structure. The chef was an angry person who had the rights to do anything he wants.
Kerry Diamond:
So shocking to hear that.
Eric Ripert:
In many kitchens, not all of them, many of them.
Kerry Diamond:
So you leave France, you come to Washington DC. Why DC?
Eric Ripert:
Washington DC because Joël Robuchon, one of my mentors, sent me to Jean-Louis Palladin at the Watergate Hotel and I have a job there.
Kerry Diamond:
And Julia spent time in DC.
Eric Ripert:
She was very good friends with Jean-Louis Palladin. They had a very good relationship.
Kerry Diamond:
You're in DC for a little while. Why do you leave and come to New York?
Eric Ripert:
I come to New York because DC is boring and New York is happening. Well, when you are a young person and you want to party on the weekend, it's not the ideal place. But also New York had a lot to offer. It's still happening today. New York reinvents itself all the time, but it brings all the talent from all over the world and in a culinary world, David Bouley was really doing extremely well and there was a lot of chefs doing very creative stuff. Le Bernardin was also one of the famous restaurants in New York at the time with Le Cirque and many others. I started to work with David Bouley as a sous chef, and then a bit later I had this offer at Le Bernardin to become the chef, the cuisine of Gilbert Le Coze. And in 1991 I started at Le Bernardin.
Kerry Diamond:
What did they do to entice you over to Le Bernardin?
Eric Ripert:
They didn't do much because on the beginning they contacted me and I said, "I am not interested by the position." And then Jean-Louis Palladin said, "You're crazy. This is an amazing opportunity. Why you say no?" And I had my justifications at the time, but it took quite some time for me to say yes. And then the minute I walk into Le Bernardin to work, it was on June 10 at 7:40 AM, I look at my watch because I felt something was, I don't know, out of the ordinary. And I was right. My sixth sense was telling me that Le Bernardin will be an important part of my life, professional life,
Kerry Diamond:
And it absolutely has been. Today Le Bernardin is a Michelin three star restaurant and one of the most highly regarded restaurants in New York City, if not the world, at large.
Eric Ripert:
We definitely strive for excellence and we are lucky to be rewarded by the New York Times and by the Michelin and many other media. And we are grateful and we celebrate those awards. But the day after, we forget about it completely and we go back to what we are supposed to do, which is work hard in creating an experience that is very special for our clients.
Kerry Diamond:
So tell us a little bit about Le Bernardin for those who haven't had the good fortune to visit.
Eric Ripert:
Le Bernardin opened in Paris in 1972, brother and sister Maguy Le Coze and Gilbert Le Coze. She's in the dining room, he's in the kitchen. They moved to New York in 1986. They had a two star at the time in Paris, closed the restaurant in Paris, completely started again in New York and right away gets first star in the New York Times. Three months after the opening is the first time that it happened in the history of the Times. I joined a few years later in 1991, Gilbert Le Coze unfortunately passed away 1994, so three years after I started and I stayed with Maguy Le Coze, who's my business partner, and we are living the dream. We are very successful. The restaurant is busy, we are rewarded all the time, and it's something that we don't take for granted. We appreciate it and it's giving us the opportunity to create and to be innovative and to reinvent ourself and to teach people what we have accumulated over the years and so on. And I love it. It's my passion. It's a lifestyle.
Kerry Diamond:
Eric, unlike many of your peers, you've focused exclusively on Le Bernardin. I know you've had some projects like your cookbooks, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but so many people expand their restaurant empires. You have focused on Le Bernardin like it's the very special diamond that it is.
Eric Ripert:
Yes. I came into the field of cooking because I had the mentality of an artisan, not necessarily of a businessman. And I learned how to become a businessman because you have to manage a restaurant and you have to be sustainable financially, and it's very important. But I have tremendous pleasure to be with my team and to be in a kitchen or in a dining room and interact with our clients. And I feel that I am in control of what I'm doing there. And I'm not a control freak. That's not what I am. But I like to be with them. And again, it's an interaction and it's a world that I love.
I had actually, at one point, I tried to develop and open few restaurants, one in Washington and one in Philadelphia, and I really was not having it, not happy about it at all. I was not at Le Bernardin, which I love to be, and it didn't please me. So I stopped immediately and I said, "It's not for me." Now, my friends who have a lot of restaurants probably will be bored to death with one restaurant. And if I had all the 50 restaurants that they have, I would go nuts.
Kerry Diamond:
But when you talk to them, they all say they wish they had one restaurant.
Eric Ripert:
They say that to me, yes.
Kerry Diamond:
One of your creative outlets is cookbooks similar to our friend Julia Child.
Eric Ripert:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
And your eighth cookbook is out right now. It's called “Eric Ripert Seafood Simple.” It is a gorgeous book.
Eric Ripert:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Why this book and tell us how it connects to Le Bernardin?
Eric Ripert:
I think I have accumulated a lot of cooking wisdom and knowledge about seafood over the years. In between my experiences before Le Bernardin and, of course, being the chef that I am at Le Bernardin, I wanted to create this cookbook to demystify how to cook seafood. When I speak to people very often I hear, "Oh, I am intimidated. I don't know, it's so difficult, or I don't know if I really like seafood. It's too fishy for me." And many stories and I was like, "Seafood is not fishy when it's fresh. It doesn't smell like fish. It doesn't taste strong. It's very delicate and it's very great in terms of flavors. And it's the ultimate delicacy, actually."
We have created a book that is almost idiot-proof. You cannot miss if you really follow our directions. And the recipes are very simple for many reasons. But the main reason is that seafood is so delicate. The more you put in a plate and the more you elaborate and the more you lose the soul of the fish to enhance the quality and make the seafood the star of the plate, you have to be very cautious at being simple and precise, of course.
Kerry Diamond:
Amazingly, you have a recipe in here for a dish that you served Julia Child. So you've met Julia a few times.
Eric Ripert:
I met Julia a few times, yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Can you tell us about one of the times she was in your dining room at Le Bernardin?
Eric Ripert:
Sure. It was probably 1992 or something like that. And we had a seared tuna salad. So the tuna was coated with Herbs de Provence, seared, served very, very rare, sliced very thinly, almost like a sashimi style. So the tuna was warm but very rare. And we were serving it with salad and black truffle vinegarette. And I was happy to cook for Julia, of course. And at the end of the meal I went to see her and she spoke to me and she said to me that she had a good meal, but I forgot to cook the tuna. And I scratched my head and I was like, "What is she talking about?" I didn't understand. The seared tuna salad was supposed to be extremely rare and it was a cultural difference. And I went back from the dining room in the kitchen, scratching my head. I was like, "Oh, my God, I'm sorry. I didn't please Julia child, but that was my intention to serve it like this." So anyway, it was a bit of a misunderstanding.
Kerry Diamond:
You can also make a confession right now. You didn't necessarily always understand what Julia was telling you?
Eric Ripert:
No, because first of all, I didn't really speak English. She had a certain way of articulating her speech and she had a very high pitch also with her voice. And I was terrified to go see her all the time because she will say, "Ooo." That's the way I perceived it at the time. And I was like, "What is she saying?" And I didn't know what to answer. So I was very, very scared of her in that aspect.
Kerry Diamond:
Eric, do you have some perspective on why Julia was so big and beloved at the time? Chefs were thrilled when she came to their restaurants.
Eric Ripert:
Yes, she was a very warm person. She loved, except for my tuna salad, but she loved food and she was very enthusiastic and she was promoting the world of the chefs and the world of the restaurant and the chefs were creating those relationships with her. And it was very nice to have someone like her also as a French chef or French cook, to have someone who loves so much my culture, French cooking, who had so much knowledge, who had done so much for French cuisine in this country. So that's why she was the most beloved person in the media at the time.
Kerry Diamond:
It's so interesting when you mentioned that Le Bernardin was very avant-garde at the time to be serving dishes like that. And I'm sure everyone who's watched the first episode immediately thinks of the scene in Paul Bocuse's restaurant. She's with Simca, they served the Loup en Croute and it just blows Julia's mind.
Eric Ripert:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us a little bit about that dish.
Eric Ripert:
So Loup means wolf in French, so it's Loup de Mer, wolf of the sea, but it's a very delicate fish. Paul Bocuse did it with puff pastry and it was presented at the table and it was prepared tableside by the waiters. What is very interesting about this recipe is that they use a technique that I believe they invented at the time, which was to remove the skin of the fish with a very sharp knife, then to cover the fish with the puff pastry and bake it. When the puff pastry will be cooked and fluffy and crunchy, the fish will be cooked at the same time and the waiters will cut it at the table. You will have not have the skin in between the puff pastry and the flesh. It was flesh puff pastry and you could eat it at the same time. And it is still today remarkable because it's nothing more testifying than this recipe and it was serving it with a beurre blanc. They still keep serving that dish that, that is a signature and a classic, and it's always perfectly done there, so it's something very special.
Kerry Diamond:
Have you ever made a Loup en Croute like that?
Eric Ripert:
Not at Le Bernardin, because we have a different style of cooking and we do cooking that is much simpler in a sense, and doesn't require to be tableside because I'm not necessarily a fan of tableside.
Kerry Diamond:
So tableside isn't really popular today, but back in the day, a lot of restaurants did tableside.
Eric Ripert:
Yes. Well before nouvelle cuisine, everything was served on platters. Either way, the waiters were going to the table with the platter and you were serving yourself or it was prepared tableside, which means it was finished tableside. Either way, flambe or the sauce was made in the front of you or they were slicing in the front of you, plating. But then with nouvelle cuisine, it started in the late 60s, 70s. One day at the restaurant Troisgros in Roanne in Burgundy, the chef said, "You know what? I'm in control of my food. I'm plating my own food, not the waiters anymore because I know exactly the way I want to create not only the decoration of the dish, but the dynamic. And I want the flavor to be a certain way and nobody knows better than I do."
And that was a revolution. From that day on, chefs started to plate their food. And I'm very happy to have the control that I have in the kitchen by knowing exactly when I'm plating what the client will have. I do not necessarily want the waiters to try their best, and I'm sure they do a good job, but it will never be the same as if it's the kitchen doing it.
Kerry Diamond:
We're so used to the chef's vision today. It's so interesting to me that once upon a time, that wasn't the case.
Eric Ripert:
It wasn't the case.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us a little bit about Paul Bocuse. Now, you never worked for him, but he was a hero of yours.
Eric Ripert:
Yes, actually, if I am in this field, if I am today, the chef that I am today is also because of Paul Bocuse, because he had a cookbook called La cuisine du marché, the cuisine of the market. And that cookbook became a worldwide bestseller everywhere, all over the planet, probably one of the most sold cookbooks. And I was fascinated by it. And instead of studying after school, I would read the recipes and I would read the entire book night after night after night and all the cookbooks. But he inspired me so much that I had bad grades and I couldn't stay in school actually. And it was a huge opportunity for me to go to culinary school, which was considered a vocational school. And I started my career because of him by accident, as well. And I had admire him because he has been an incredible ambassador for not only French cuisine, but for great food, great dining experience. Paul Bocuse is an icon. He will never be replaced.
Kerry Diamond:
I wonder if he and Julia ever met.
Eric Ripert:
Probably in heaven. Now they are together, but in real life, I am sure they met.
Kerry Diamond:
That's a nice thought. Why do you think Julia endures?
Eric Ripert:
In life? You have good food and bad food. She was the greatest ambassador of good food, good lifestyle. And she inspired people at the time. She was extremely charismatic. She had incredible personality. She was very inspirational. And today, she's still very much with us, with that legacy that she left us behind, which is her cookbooks and TV shows that we can always look at the originals. But it's very inspiring to see movies on her and a TV series. It's refreshing in many ways to see that it was not too long ago, and she revolutionized our world.
Kerry Diamond:
Eric, Julia is coming over for dinner. What do you serve?
Eric Ripert:
So Julia is coming for dinner, I'm giving her my tuna salad again and I will cook it more, but not well done. We will have a great discussion together and we will have a glass of wine. At the end, she will like my tuna salad and that will be my story.
Kerry Diamond:
I love it. What kind of wine would you serve with that?
Eric Ripert:
With a tuna salad, a good Burgundy. That would be very nice, I think.
Kerry Diamond:
What do you think you two would talk about?
Eric Ripert:
We will speak about the tuna and about the fishermen who caught the tuna and how we caught it and where he caught it. And we will speak about the truffles that are in a salad and about the wine and the winemaker. And she will explain to me she has been to the winemaker already and we will speak about the truffle that is in season and she has been hunting for truffles with the dogs and the truffle hunters. And that will be the discussion we will have and we will speak for a long time and have many glasses of wine. Probably end up with good chocolate dessert.
Kerry Diamond:
And you will understand every word she says.
Eric Ripert:
Now I will understand, yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. Well, Eric, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate everything you've done for the food world and the world of hospitality at large.
Eric Ripert:
You are too kind. The real legend is Julia. Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you to Eric Ripert and Daniel Goldfarb for joining us on Dishing on Julia, the official companion podcast of “Julia.” Now streaming on Max. Dishing on Julia is produced by The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Special thanks to Steven Tolle and the team at CityVox. Our executive producers are Catherine Baker and Yasmin Nesbat. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. We'd love for you to leave a rating and review for Dishing on Julia on your favorite podcast platform and be sure to subscribe. Tell me in the review what you would serve Julia for dinner, bœuf bourguignon, pizza, tuna sandwich. I'd love to know. In the meantime, leaving you with these wise words from Paul Child as played by David Hyde Pierce.
Paul Child:
The only way to stop the world from passing you by is to do what you've always done.
Julia Child:
What's that?
Paul Child:
Walk two steps ahead of it, so that's what we'll do.