Where the chef will make your bed too

THOMAS Keller’s pursuit of perfection is legendary in the restaurant community. It is “the ultimate component of his personality,” writes Michael Ruhlman in “The Soul of a Chef,” and indeed, when the two men collaborated on “The French Laundry Cookbook,” Keller told Ruhlman exactly how he wanted to be portrayed in the book -- not so much a master chef as “a Buddhist monk in search of perfection.”

But seeking perfection in a venture as ultimately collaborative as a restaurant -- where even a lowly busboy can compromise the best chef’s best efforts on a given night -- requires a great deal of control.

At the French Laundry, in the tiny Napa Valley town of Yountville, Keller has that control, in the kitchen and the dining room.

Now he wants even more control.

He’s building a bakery next door to Bouchon, the bistro he also owns, down the street from the French Laundry, “so we can bake our own breads and make our own ice creams and chocolates for both restaurants.” He’s also creating a new line of Limoges porcelain plates and bowls, designed specifically to accommodate his food. More importantly -- and more ambitiously -- he wants to build a 20-room inn on a three-acre site across the street from the French Laundry.

“I want to control the entire experience,” he says, “not just from the minute you walk into the restaurant but from the minute you get to Yountville. I want dinner to be just part of the overall experience. I don’t just want to satisfy your hunger. I want to influence your experience here, from beginning to end.”

Keller knows that many people come to the French Laundry with the sense of reverence and expectation one customarily associates with a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and he realizes that his desire for complete control may make him seem both despotic and messianic.

Tyranny in the kitchen

Many chefs are tyrants, and Keller -- even with his once-notorious temper now largely (like everything else) under control -- might be dismissed as an eccentric were it not for his prodigious culinary talent and the obvious delight he takes in the pleasure he provides others.

“We won’t force our guests to do anything,” he says. “I just think that I can maximize their pleasure by enveloping them in a cocoon situation.”

Although the inn isn’t likely to open for three years, Keller is already working on preliminary plans with an architect for the inn.

“We won’t have a restaurant in the inn,” Keller says, “but we will bring you food two or three times a day, and it will be based on where you’re eating tonight and where you ate last night.

“Say you’re out all day, and you have a 7 o’clock dinner reservation at the French Laundry. What could you eat when you come back to the inn at 4 o’clock in the afternoon that would start to get you ready for that experience? I’m not sure what the answer is yet, but I know it will be different than what we’ll send to your room if you have a dinner reservation at some other restaurant.

“And how about the next morning? What should you eat for breakfast after one of those dinners? Again, I don’t know the specifics yet. But I know it will differ, depending on where you ate dinner.”

At most hotels, Keller says, “a restaurant is an amenity for guests of the hotel. Our inn will be an amenity for customers in the restaurant.”

In this, as in so much of his kitchen technique, Keller is following the French tradition. Many of the best restaurants in the French countryside have small inns to accommodate their clients, especially in out-of-the-way locations like, say, Michel Guerard’s Les Pres d’Eugenie in Eugenie-les-Bains (pop. 467) in southwest France or Marc Meneau’s L’Esperance in St.-Pere-sous-Vezelay (pop. 348) in Burgundy.

In either restaurant -- and at many others, similarly remote -- the prospect of a long, post-prandial drive or a late-night search for a nearby hotel room might discourage people from coming to dinner.

The French touch

Like Keller, both Guerard and Meneau pride themselves on taking care of their clients outside the dining room as well as inside. Guerard became famous for cuisine minceur -- diet food that’s more Escoffier than Pritikin -- and his complex in Eugenie-les-Bains is a health spa, as well as a Michelin three-star restaurant. Meneau puts so much effort into his lavish breakfasts that he calls the meal “la sourire de la maison” -- “the smile of the house.”

But I’ve spent eight nights at Guerard and 10 at Meneau over the years, and I never had the sense that either man was as determined as Keller to control my entire experience.

On the other hand, they do have the French tradition of fine dining in the hinterlands to rely on, while Keller cooks in the United States -- long the land of Chef Boyardee, frozen TV dinners and, even now, of Big Macs in the boondocks.

Of course, if he really wants to control the customer’s entire experience, from the minute you get to Yountville until the minute you leave, I wonder if -- once he gets his inn and his bakery up and running -- he’ll try opening a gas station, maybe two gas stations

Hmmm. Now that I think of it, I bought one of the best sandwiches of my life at a gas station just off the autostrada between Rome and the Amalfi coast, so maybe that’s not as crazy as it sounds.

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David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com.