Roland G. Henin

by Susan Crowther

  He took care of them, cooked properly, consciously. He did good food, didn’t slop it on the plate … very nice. Staff were happy, Thomas continued doing well, and then around mid-August, the saucier quit. We were close to shutting down for the season, and it was late to hire someone new. I asked Thomas if he’d like to be the saucier at night, but still do the staff meal. He had no experience with sauces, so I said not to worry, I’ll work with you to get you up to snuff.

  He learned to make the sauces. He worked both jobs with no problem, no argument.

  * * *

  The interesting thing about Roland Henin and Thomas Keller is that not only was this relationship one of their defining culinary moments, but both were each other’s first mentoring experience. By 1976, Roland Henin received his green card and, armed with years of culinary skill, had earned the right to secure a position of value and stature—executive chef. The Dunes Club was Chef Henin’s first executive chef position. By 1976, Thomas Keller had gained enough experience to be of a mindset to receive appropriate guidance—a mentor who would expose him to the value of culinary arts. Both were in the right position and the right moment to meet each other. And besides, they both had the same pant size—a perfect match, indeed.

  RGH: Being a mentor … it’s a pretty complex kind of a situation. Who seeks who? How does it happen? How does it last? I think in terms of Thomas, I was very low-key or fortunate, in a sense. I consider myself somewhat of a gardener. I love to garden. I just started my seeds for this spring, you know? In gardening, the main thing is the soil. If you have a good soil, the rest is easy. If you have a good soil, you need to provide some sunshine. You need to provide some water. You need to pick up the weeds. That’s it! The soil will do the work, if the soil is well-balanced, not too acidic or alkaline. I worked in Nova Scotia, and you couldn’t grow much. The soil’s just not made for growing. It’s moss, or whatever it is. It just doesn’t grow, no matter how much you work on it. You can put some stuff and stuff and stuff on that soil, and things are just not coming up. And then you go to California and the soil is perfect. It has the sunshine and everything, just so.

  Thomas was a good soil. He didn’t require very much, in terms of maintenance, because the quality of the soil was there. The rest was natural development: provide sunshine, provide water, pick up the weed, and keep the pests away. We were able to calculate this system over the years in many ways. It just happened to work. And it worked with other people too, for different reasons and amounts of time.

  Sometimes, they just need a mentor in a difficult period in their life. Sometimes they want to go too fast too soon. That’s the American way: become executive chef right away, and it’s too big a thing. You slow them down: What about if you go a little sideways first for a couple of years, and get ready for that big job? You try to help them benefit from your experience. You need to have a good soil. Like I said, I was very fortunate to have been working with Thomas. The soil was in excellent condition and the rest made it easy. It just worked, you know?

  SUSAN: I might say the same for you as a mentor. He was a plant that could thrive in your soil.

  RGH: To me, that’s what it is. It doesn’t require an excessive amount of work, and it was a pleasure to see those plants grow and develop. That’s the real work, to see it happen. You don’t do it for yourself. You do it for the satisfaction.

  Recently, this young man called me and we talked a little bit. He asked, “How do I become a master chef?”

  I said, “Whaaa—really? What are you doing?”

  “I’m in the school at the Cordon Bleu.”

  “How long you been there?”

  “I been there three weeks.”

  Aaah, bah bah bah. I’ll find out stuff from him. I said, “Okay, how old are you?”

  “Oh, I’m twenty-five.”

  “That’s a good age. You’re on the right track and everything.”

  We started to get into the details and he said, “I am an ex-Marine.”

  “That’s fantastic. What else? Tell me about you?”

  “Well, I got five kids.”

  HOOOOLEEEY COW! Five kids, twenty-five. “How long do you think that’s going to take you (to be a Master Chef )?”

  “Oh, I want to do that in ten years.”

  I said, “Waaait a minute, waaaaaait a minute, now. You’re twenty-five. Even though you like cooking, you have learned little. You’re starting, which is good. But you have five kids. You’re going to have to feed them. You have to work and earn some money to pay for that. And they’re gonna need your attention. They’re gonna need your time. You’re not going to be able to dedicate all your time to your Master Chef program. There are twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, and a month is thirty days … for everybody. You wanna become a Master Chef in ten years. Where are you gonna find the time? How are you going to stretch the twenty-four hours? How you going to make the rent? Slow down. Develop a plan. Become a little more relaxed. It’s going to take you at least fifteen years. You’re a Marine and you have discipline. That’s a big plus for you, but start thinking in reality.”

  SUSAN: Being a Master Chef is not just in your art. It’s how you live your whole life that makes you a Master Chef.

  RGH: Exactly. I refer back to my very first pastry chef that I had. Everything he was doing, he was doing that extra effort. When I saw him … at the time, I didn’t understand much, but he was making that little stroke or those little things on top of that chocolate, or bonbon—the little tuiles … just to make it perfect. Thomas does that very well. He always tries to do one step better than last time or one step better than the other guy. He always tries to do that little thing—more, extra, better than before. Achieving mastery is not what you do the last six months before the test. It is what you do for those twenty years, learning your craft. It is a way of life.

  You won’t believe this, but at my age, I still don’t have a TV. I never had one. There is good reason for that. I don’t have the time. There are too many things to do. The second reason is I hate the crap that they feed and do to you, the subliminal messaging. They take you for an idiot through those programs. All those advertisements and everything. I can’t stand it, and I refuse to accept it, to buy it, to listen to it. It’s disgusting! It’s degrading to your mind! Avoiding TV is one of the healthiest things you can do in your life. Watching TV is like a zombie, buuuh buuuuh … you are not active or thinking or feeling things.

  Like the students … they don’t think anymore. They don’t figure things out. They just get brainwashed, wuuurrrr … they love the lecture and all those things. But when you say, “get up,” they panic, because they don’t know how to figure things out anymore. They say, Chef, can you tell me why this or tell me why that? I say, figure out what you think, first. Figure things out on your own and then come to verify with me if you are on the right track. You know? As opposed to, Chef, can you spoon-feed me, because I’m too goombah to spoon-feed myself. I refuse to do that. Some of them get upset. Well, you get paid to tell me that. Well, not exactly … I get paid to help you understand, and this is my way. Spoon-feed is just too easy. You don’t learn how to think. If I was a bad instructor, then I would spoon-feed you. Anyway. That’s the way it is.

  SUSAN: That’s the bad soil.

  RGH: [Laughs] Yes, soil that has been mistreated, improper compost and all those things.

  SUSAN: Chef Thomas credits you with his European apprenticeship: “Chef Henin got me to France.”

  RGH: In 1979, I sent him to Café du Parc. Thomas was from Florida, and it was the winter. I worked in Florida for many, many years and had a lot of contacts there. I sent him down there to work with Pierre. That was quite an awakening for him, an eye-opener. [Laughs]

  Thomas kept in touch. After working with Pierre, he went back to the Catskills to work at La Rive. In those days, I was at the CIA and running long distance, to stay in shape and protect my mind. He would stop by the CIA, either on his way down to Florida or on his wa
y up to the Catskills. Depending on my schedule—I think I was p.m. at the time, doing the Stage—he would stop in at the beginning of my lecture and sit down at the back of the class to watch what was happening. He would wait for me to finish, and then we would close and go out and have a drink or whatever it might be.

  Because I was running marathons in those days (it was a great, great, great, great way for me to deal with the stress of the teaching and everything) I would go and spend the weekend in the Catskills. He was working at La Rive and I would help him—not cook, actually, although sometimes do a dish, or spend time in the kitchen or time outside, and I would run. The Catskills are great because it is hilly and good for training. So, we kept on going, there were ongoing discussions … he was always curious, always asking … and at some point the question came up that he would like to learn some more, get more in-depth.

  Keep in mind that this was thirty-five years ago. In the late seventies to early eighties, we didn’t have all the different talent that we have today with the American chef and everybody like this, doing good stuff. If you needed more in-depth information, most of the roots or foundation, the place to go was Europe. I was at the CIA, and we sent people—kids that wanted to learn more or expand. We would send them to Europe as a stagiare (or “stage,” a short-term internship, to acquire new skills and be exposed to new cuisines). As a stage, you don’t get paid—maybe room and board, if you are lucky.

  Some did make it, some didn’t. It was mostly about attitude. Some were very humble. The chefs give you a lot of crap to test you, make sure you are worthy of their kitchen. You go there to learn something from them, so you have to demonstrate that you are worthy of their teaching. Otherwise, why should they waste their time? Sure, you don’t get paid or anything, and you’re treated like a piece of dirt. These young American kids, they graduate from the CIA and they go there and they say, What’s the matter, you didn’t hold out the red carpet? I leave from there and work for nothing? Are you crazy? They get that attitude right away that they are the Gods of Cooking, they deserve better, and so it doesn’t work. Some of them, like Thomas, shut their mouth and did their work, and they demonstrated that they were worthy of the teaching and they learned. Those guys took them under their wing. It’s just how it was.

  We always kept in touch, wherever he was. I would visit him—we’d have dinner or something and have discussions … what’s the thing, what’s the next step. Then he had some disagreement with the owners in Los Angeles and he found himself without work. They had ideas, and he had ideas, and they were different, and he lost his job. He was totally devastated, so we sat down and we talked. I said, “Look, you deserve better. It’s time for you to start doing on your own.” We talked about where and what and all this kind of stuff, figuring out what should be the next step. At the time, California was coming up pretty strong, especially with the wine—Sonoma and then Napa. I said clearly to him, “If I was your age and as talented as you are, this is where I would go, what I would look for and do. This is where I would open a small, classy restaurant.”

  Swimming Upstream

  Don’t get me wrong … it was a constant battle … but I could take it. I had wide shoulder and thick spine and hard head, and I didn’t quit.

  —RGH

  The Executive Chef

  SUSAN: The years between 1967 and 1976 seem to be “the lost mentoring years.” Was Thomas Keller your first “official” mentoring experience?

  RGH: I probably taught kids before Thomas, but mostly I keep quiet. During the Expo, when I was in the French Pavilion, we work and we produce. We work our station. There is no room for mentoring. You mentor when you are in a position. Until then, you work your ass off. It took me about two years to get a green card, and without the green card, you don’t mentor, either. You have to keep that low profile. You don’t want to draw attention to yourself.

  I worked a few jobs, in Canada, Nova Scotia, Bahamas, Florida, and New England … summers up north, winters in the south. I loved to work in the summer in Cape Breton. There was great fishing and hunting … beautiful country. The cost of living was so cheap, but so were wages. I had to work winters in Florida to afford working in Cape Breton.

  As an illegal, there were lots of temp jobs, working for the recruiters, working quietly, seasonally—lots of transitions. When you have no green card, you keep a low profile. It took about two years until the lawyers were paid and they finally delivered. After I received my green card, I could go out and get a legitimate job, have more of a say where I could go and what I would do. I could now secure positions like executive chef, and I could now hire staff of my own … tend my own garden.

  Thomas Keller

  Chef/Founder, Thomas Keller Restaurant Group

  If he made me understand why people cook and made me want to become a chef as a profession, then he was going to be able to help me do anything I wanted to do.

  THOMAS: Mentor/mentee is a difficult kind of concept for anybody to grasp, maybe especially for those in the culinary world. In the late seventies and early eighties, our chefs, whether they were the chef de cuisine or sous-chefs, expected us to actually know what we were supposed to do, always ahead of time. Pierre (Latuberne) threw a knife at me once, because I didn’t know how to truss a chicken the way he wanted me to. Like, How come you don’t know that? What are you, a fool?

  So there’s a little apprehension right away around that dynamic. When you can break through the barrier and have a true relationship, break through to where you can have a discussion with somebody … that’s where it begins. The discussions, if they happen often enough, will lead to opinions and advice … and through that process, you’ll start to rely on that person and their expertise.

  It may begin with the mentee, because a mentor doesn’t always know. You’re looking at a group of people and you’re not sure who wants to be mentored. It’s the same thing in a classroom. At a young age, you were expected to raise your hand if you had a question. If you didn’t raise your hand, the teacher assumed you understood. That’s so important, and it’s hard to do … to raise our hand. That’s where the initial mentorship happens. It could also be from a mentor seeing somebody. I may sense apprehension or shyness, desire that is not able to be expressed openly. The mentor can then initiate the process. An organization may create a structure: when a new employee is hired, they are assigned a mentor. That could be something temporary. You can’t just assign a relationship, but at least it’s a way to express the idea; if it blossoms into a relationship, so much the better. If it doesn’t, hopefully they’ll find their way to having another mentor, or they may not need one at that time. You cannot force it; they’ve got to want it.

  * * *

  It began at the Dunes Club. Roland Henin allowed me to express my abilities through my execution of the Family Meal and help me understand the true purpose of a chef—nurturing people. Regardless of the cooking level—whether it was what he was doing for the guests at the Dunes Club or what I was doing for the staff—it was all about nourishing. I embraced the idea … to resonate with people in this way. That was the reason I became a chef.

  Up until then, cooking was just a job. It allowed me to travel. As a young man, it was a form of freedom. You get in the car, and you end up anywhere you want to end up. You knock on somebody’s door and say, “Do you need a cook?” Sooner or later, you’re going to land a job.

  I applied for the job, and he hired me. That period was a very short period of time—the summer—where we built a relationship beyond employer and employee, through his ability to enlighten me on nurturing through cooking. After that, because of that one learning process—that one epiphany, which changed my life—he became someone who was very important to me. All of a sudden, he understood. He was the person, the guiding light. If he made me understand why people cook and made me want to become a chef as a profession, then he was going to be able to help me do anything I wanted to do.

  SUSAN: There was an assumption that he w
ould be available …

  THOMAS: There was never a question. I didn’t ask him to be my mentor; it was an organic process. Later, as our relationship grew, I needed somebody who could help me get to France. And that was Roland. At that time, the next moment in my career was moving to France, and I was in search of somebody to help me get there. Roland was encouraging. He felt that it was extremely important to study in France during that period. Today, of course, it’s not the same. There are now so many great chefs in America that I don’t believe you need to go to France. But back then it was important, not just to learn the cuisine, but to learn the culture. I didn’t put any parameters around how long I’d be in France; I just went. I didn’t have any responsibilities here in the United States, so it was easy for me to put all my belongings in a small storage unit and move. I was there for almost two years. I had a wonderful place to live, I had friends, and I had jobs. I was very fortunate to have had that kind of structure.

  Not only was I able to get into some of the greatest kitchens in Paris, but also into some modest kitchens. I saw a spectrum of what was going on—how a one-star kitchen developed its cuisine in a relatively modest way with a modest budget … to be able to understand, not necessarily the importance of technique, but the importance of consistency, the importance of quality ingredients, and mostly, the importance of building relationships with those purveyors: the farmers, fishermen, foragers, and gardeners.

  The biggest impact was the cultural part—that, in and of itself, shaped who I became. That was truly beneficial—understanding that relationship with those people who dedicated their lives to bringing great ingredients to great restaurants and then supporting those people in a way that enhanced their lifestyle, which yielded the best ingredients. Those relationships were one of the main differences between a modest one-star restaurant and a great three-star restaurant. It was about relationship-building and realizing that you must spend the money to get the quality you want and need, in order to elevate the experience for your staff and guests.