32 Yolks

32 Yolks: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line by Eric Ripert and Veronica Chambers
Published: 2016
Narrated by: Peter Ganim
Length: 07:26 (247 pages)

I love a good food memoir, and this is probably the first one I’ve read coming from a Michelin star chef. I think I heard of Eric Ripert through Anthony Bourdain’s various television shows, and then I watched both On The Table and Avec Eric, which I enjoyed but wouldn’t necessarily rave about. Other chefs do seem to mention him with reverence, I’ve noticed, so he’s always seemed more like a legit chef than a media personality to me.

This covers his childhood right up until he leaves for America after having apprenticed with Joël Robuchon. He had what seemed like a privileged life, with parents who were fairly well-off, but it was actually quite a difficult childhood. His parents divorced early on and both re-married. He barely got to see his father, who he idolized, and his mother married a man who was emotionally and physically abusive. He was then sent to a boarding school, only to have a former priest try to sexually abuse him. His youth was quite dark, and he harboured a lot of anger from those years.

His time with Joël Robuchon was basically another form of abuse. I don’t get how cooks can handle angry, petty chefs. I just wouldn’t last in that environment, but I guess when you’re caught up in striving for perfection, you’ll withstand anything. Robuchon has received more Michelin stars than anyone in the world, so I guess it works for him. Thankfully, it sounds like the trend of perpetually angry chefs is slowly changing. Eric Ripert, despite being trained in that environment, apparently doesn’t act that way in his kitchens.

I loved hearing about his early days as a cook, how he’d come home from work and cut pounds and pounds of vegetables to try to master his knife skills. I also loved the few tales from culinary school and thought it was interesting how all of the students train together at first and then decide whether to specialize as a cook or a waiter. In most countries, being a waiter is a temporary job to make money while waiting for something better to come along, but in France, some waiters go through culinary school training. It’s a career for them, not a summer job.

I loved this. It was an incredibly well written and beautifully told story. He’s very honest in it and doesn’t shy away from his failures, some of which are hilarious. I’m not sure how much of the writing was Ripert and how much was his co-writer Veronica Chambers, but I hope they carry on with a second memoir of his time in America. He’s now a Buddhist, something that has helped him manage his anger, and I’d love to read more about that as well as his rise to fame.