Thomas Keller
person on 5 shows · 14 statements across 1 episodes · said 9 times in 6 episodes since 2019
All-In 4 
How I Built This 2 
the Knowledge Project 1 
BigDeal 1 
Latent Space 1
On the record as a speaker too: Thomas Keller across every show, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year, every show
tap a year for its mentions
All-In 4How I Built This 2the Knowledge Project 1BigDeal 1Latent Space 1
2026 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →
14 statements about Thomas Keller, every show
Keller: Wasting ingredients diminishes the lives and labor of food producers
“If I'm burning a piece of bread There was a farmer who planted the weed, harvested the weed, there was somebody who milled the weed, there was somebody who made the bread. It's like, I'm diminishing their life by not taking care of the products that we have in…”
Keller: Whispering direct feedback to staff works better than yelling
“If I sit there and yell at you because you've done something wrong, You're not going to necessarily understand what you've done wrong because you feel, you're feeling insignificant. If I whisper in your ear and say, you know, you really disappointed me, and th…”
Keller: Put $5,000 down to buy the $1.2 million French Laundry
“We went into escrow on a 1.2 million dollar property for 5000 dollars.”
Keller: An investor offered full funding in exchange for future control
“There was one investor who offered to bankroll me all the way, and I was sitting in the garden at the French Laundry with him at the time, and he said, but I want control over everything that you're doing in your future.”
Keller: Storing fish upright on ice preserves the quality of its flesh
“So, so the shape of the ice is, Is now affecting the quality of the flesh of the fish. But if you stand it straight up as it swims, there's no pressure on the flesh.”
Keller: French Laundry Team Opened Bouchon to Provide Late-Night Dining
“We decided the best thing to do was to open a restaurant that was open until midnight.”
The French Laundry refuses to negotiate ingredient prices with its purveyors
“Which means I don't really ask, I call them my partners, my purveyors, how much something costs.”
Keller: Fine dining restaurants should be elite in skill, not elitist
“We run an elite restaurant, but we're not elitist.”
Keller says he is in his restaurant kitchens every night in town
“I am in the kitchen every night that I'm home here in Napa Valley, and when I go to New York City, I'm in the kitchen every night that I'm in New York.”
Keller refuses to license his name to mass-market food or franchises
“I, that doesn't interest me. I've never been interested in lending my name to, you know, a can of soup or a pizza.”
Keller: Opening restaurants is seductive, but operators must commit long-term
“You think about opening a restaurant is very exciting. It's seductive. It's exciting. But then you've got to run it for 20 years. You can't just close it. You have to open a restaurant that's going to be part of a community. And it lives on in perpetuity, or a…”
Keller was the first American chef with two three-star Michelin restaurants
“You became the first American chef and one of the very few chefs in the world to have two Michelin three-star restaurants”
Keller: Accolades reward yesterday, while negative criticism drives improvement
“Every accolade that we receive or anybody receives is for what you did yesterday. It's not what you're doing today or what you're going to do tomorrow. So, you know, we appreciate criticism. I mean, that's the one thing we ask is like, what didn't you like? I …”