San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Food world reacts to Keller’s Mexican foray
All it takes is the mere whisper of a new restaurant for Thomas Keller to capture the attention of the national food world.
Keller, whose restaurant portfolio contains seven Michelin stars, is the most decorated chef in America. His flagship, the French Laundry, launched Yountville as a culinary destination, a reputation buoyed by his subsequent projects there: Bouchon, Bouchon Bakery and Ad Hoc.
So, understandably, when job postings for an unnamed Mexican restaurant from the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group began appearing online in March, all eyes turned to Yountville. The postings showed Keller was searching for a chef de cuisine who “specializes in Mexican” cooking.
Keller purchased the Yountville space that formerly housed Hurley’s, and this fall further job postings revealed the name of the project to be La Calenda and that the restaurant was going to showcase “authentic Oaxaca cuisine.”
Yet this time, the reception was not the typical breathless hype for a Keller restaurant.
Instead of anticipation, questions have risen to the forefront — especially those surrounding white chefs with national platforms and they relate to issues of cultural appropriation, race, access and power. Meanwhile, reactions from both the general public and food writers have ranged from tepid enthusiasm to quizzical eyebrows.
This reception represents a seismic shift in the way diners, chefs and food media view the dining landscape in 2018. And while every restaurant project is different, the new conversations surrounding them are necessary and beneficial to the industry. These questions should be asked.
Neither Keller nor his camp would speak on the record to The Chronicle about the project for this story.
Keller’s trepidation to discuss La Calenda may be understandable, especially in the wake of Lucky Cricket, the Chinese restaurant from celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern. In an interview, Zimmern dismissed past work of immigrant chefs and called into question the upbringing of P.F. Chang’s Philip Chiang.
Zimmern has since issued apologies for his culturally insensitive comments, but he made clear that Lucky Cricket is the effort of a white male chef in America using his platform to provide the dining public with Chinese food as he saw fit. With that, he became the poster child for culinary white privilege. (Meanwhile, Lucky Cricket is off to a rough start in Minnesota.)
This much is clear: Restaurant openings, in Yountville or San Francisco or Minneapolis, are no longer just restaurant openings. They can reflect industry issues, local community dynamics, social norms and financial questions.
On a business level, Keller’s foray into Oaxacan food makes sense. Oaxaca has deservedly become a hot spot travel destination: Houston International Airport even has direct flights to Oaxaca now.
With La Calenda, which is due to open in the new year, Thomas Keller has once again captured the attention of the Bay Area dining world. In 2019, the difference might be that instead of dictating the future of dining to the public, La Calenda will be, in part, shaped by the restaurant world’s more introspective 2018.