Restaurant kitchens, including the haute kitchens of the world, are notoriously brutal places. They're physically demanding, with intense heat, literal and figurative. There are lots of people, all of whose efforts must be coordinated, working on their feet long hours to create perfection—and profit—under the pressure of time. Hands burn. Tempers flare. Staffs churn. Many of the finest kitchens run on tension. And fear.
It was no different for Eric Ripert, acclaimed chef of Le Bernardin, which is consistently one of the world's top-rated restaurants—the maximum three Michelin stars, four from the New York Times—smack in the bustling heart of midtown Manhattan. Although he has been at the helm of the celebrated fish restaurant for nearly 20 years, Ripert was schooled in France, in the most time-honored tradition—humiliation. "The goal is to break down a cook, then rebuild him." Having trained at such culinary cathedrals as Paris' 400-year-old Le Tour D'Argent, Ripert "thought that engaging in verbal abuse, scaring the cooks, and being a dictator was the right way."
Newly ensconced at Le Bernardin with his impeccable credentials, and turning out plate after stunning plate of warm lobster carpaccio and whole red snapper baked in rosemary and thyme salt crust, with the help of 40 cooks, Ripert was losing staff. Those remaining were miserable. So was he. You can mix sea urchin roe with jalapeno-wasabi jam, but, says Ripert, "you can't mix anger and happiness."
In The kitchen at Le Bernardin, which accommodates 40 cooks, chef Eric Ripert keeps chaos at bay.
Much thought led to a humbling realization: "I contemplated what was wrong," says Ripert. "And I concluded I was wrong." Around this time, he began the study of Buddhism, and it inspired him to change his way of managing the kitchen. The new goal was to create a nonchaotic environment where he could maintain high standards and a Zen attitude even at a fast pace. That turned out to be the easy part. The hard part? "I had to convince the people I was abusing the day before."
It's not that spirituality is anywhere on display in his temple of fish. "I use Buddhist principles in the way I run the restaurant without bringing in the Buddhist religion," Ripert says. "Buddhism is a bright light in my life but I don't talk about it in the restaurant." Instead, like an ethereal fumet de poisson, it infuses almost everything that the chef now does.
Take compassion, an essential element of Buddhist enlightenment. It's a mistake to think that compassion requires Buddhists to be vegetarians. Contrary to popular belief, "Buddhism doesn't prescribe vegetarianism. It is adapted to the environment people inhabit, so that if you live on the steppes of Mongolia, you will eat meat, primar-ily from sheep." The Dalai Lama isn't a vegetarian, adds Ripert, who last spring organized a benefit and lunch for His Holiness. "He gets sick if he eats no meat."
What Buddhists do is care about the suffering of animals, Ripert said at a discussion of Buddhism in the Kitchen at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in New York. "There is no life without suffering." It matters to the chef how animals live and die. His sous-chefs are mindful where the food is sourced. "They have respect for the ingredients and respect for the life of animals." Nothing on the menu, no matter how exotic, comes from an endangered species or unsustainable source.
Respect for ingredients translates as well to high regard for the fishermen, farmers, and other purveyors who supply the restaurant and whose briny operations the cooks often visit. A search for the best ingredients will take Ripert one day to pluck oysters from shoreline beds and the next to the deck of a fishing boat off the New England coast.
Appreciation of the ingredients mandates impeccable care and high art in the preparation of the cuisine. "Because of the beauty of the ingredients, we try to do our best to elevate the qualities in terms of taste," says Ripert. Cooking fish requires a precision that less delicate proteins do not; there's little margin for error. Only exquisite freshness of ingredients will do, as the finished dish must not only meld flavor and texture but deliver a clean, ocean taste—as Ripert likes to say, the ocean at high tide, not at low tide.
Ripert, whose restaurant has maintained its stars longer than any other establishment in New York, doesn't run specials "because you can't have a genius idea every day." Nor does he offer any signature dishes. "As soon as you have a signature dish you become stagnant," he insists. "The chefs become bored to death with it, lose their passion for it, and then overlook the details that make the dish good."
Mindfulness permeates Le Bernardin's operations. In addition to attempting to make every dish the best dish, Ripert gives constant thought to how to improve the quality of his team: "How can we have a better system with less struggle to perform during the chaotic time of service?"
As a result, two thirds of his staff now stay more than three years, and many key people have been with him nearly 20 years. Ripert considers the team an "amazing success. Someone can succeed here because of the support of the team, even if they are not the best on their own."
Unlike most star chefs, Ripert has no plans to clone Le Bernardin, despite constant offers. "We excel, and you can't duplicate excellence without being on-site often." Besides, he asks, "how much money do you need? I'm not willing to compromise standards. I have found balance."
