Thomas Keller Asked Me to Leave The French Laundry. It Turned Into My Most Extraordinary Night as a Critic.

On at least two occasions, Thomas Keller, the exhaustively acclaimed chef of the French Laundry and Per Se, has served mushroom soup to restaurant critics via a glass bong—an allusion to a negative review published nearly 10 years ago. MacKenzie Chung Fegan, restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, encounters a decidedly less playful Keller during a recent visit to the French Laundry, where she is separated from her table, made to wait in a courtyard for Keller, and ultimately informed by the chef that he would like the critic gone from his restaurant. Fegan manages to stay at the French Laundry for another three hours; throughout, Keller’s power intrudes in ways subtle (“apology truffles”) and not.

I tell Keller that I come from a restaurant family. My mother’s parents opened Henry’s Hunan on Kearny Street in San Francisco in 1974, and my cousins carry on their legacy today. Like Keller, my grandparents served a good meal to an open-minded critic on a charmed day, and that review changed their lives. How strange it is to now be on the other side, to hear this famous man’s voice catch as he tries to find a polite way to ask me to leave. 

I told Keller I wasn’t going to write a review, and I meant it; I don’t have much to add to Ho and Clark’s recent critiques of the food. I will say that our servers put on the show of their lives, trying to save the evening, but all the cheerful professionalism in the world couldn’t cut through what had transpired, the inhospitality of it all. 

Thirty years ago, critics lost their minds over Keller’s innovations, his puckish fusion of French technique and American cuisine. If, Keller seems to insist, he and his team can execute those dishes with perfection, day after day, shouldn’t the raves keep rolling in? And if they don’t? Those critics can hit the road.