At 90, an Artist in the Kitchen and on Canvas
This fall, I had the great pleasure of speaking with legendary chef Jacques Pépin in advance of his 90th birthday (on December 18) and the launch of his latest cookbook. We discussed culinary and artistic inspiration, his favorite drinks and how he prepares for the holidays. Here is a glimpse into our conversation, one that flowed from Champagne and the perfect Kir Royale to the joy of painting.
WILLA VAN NOSTRAND: I love your new cookbook with its recipes and your paintings. I’m curious about your inspiration as an artist and a chef. How do your paintings and cooking inspire each other?
JACQUES PÉPIN: I’m nearly 90 years old, and my aspirational self was more into cooking, and now I get more inspiration from painting. When I’m painting, I don’t plan ahead; I do it spur of the moment.
WVN: The first time I saw one of your illustrated menus was at a Christmas dinner in 2016 at Stone Acres Farm in Stonington [Connecticut]. When did you start illustrating menus?
JP: At the beginning of our marriage, Gloria and I started writing a book where we’d do a menu on one page, and guests would sign the other. I have 12 big books of illustrations, menus for everyone in my life.
WVN: What are your favorite holiday traditions and drinks?
JP: I’ll visit my daughter, Claudine, in Rhode Island, and we’ll have a big chicken or small turkey and bûche de noël. I come from Lyon, where cassis and Kir are quite common. The Kir Royale is for a special occasion, but don’t use an extraordinary Champagne; a good sparkling wine works.
WVN: What’s your favorite cocktail?
JP: The Reverse Manhattan. One time, I was visiting Julia Child and her husband, and Julia was doing something similar. The Manhattan was a bit strong, so we added a bit of lime juice and just two tablespoons of bourbon, instead of more bourbon in the traditional way.
WVN: How do you stock your holiday bar?
JP: We always have red wine and rosé in the fridge, and a big ice machine for ice. Next to that, the alcohol: whiskey, gin, vodka—I pull that out when guests are here.
WVN: Any hot drinks?
JP: Grog is for winter when it’s really cold: dark rum, lime or lemon, sugar, boiling water.
WVN: Do you like dessert cocktails?
JP: They’re fine, but I’d rather have a glass of Champagne.
WVN: Any foods you can’t live without?
JP: What I want on the table is very good bread and butter—it’s hard to beat that.
WVN: Do you have any advice to young chefs?
JP: Work with the best possible chef you can. Say, it’s with Daniel Boulud or Thomas Keller. You have to look at the food through the eyes of that chef for a year, two, three, maybe eight to 10 years. The idea of food, taste—we are all different; you cannot escape yourself [and the flavors and tastes you alone prefer]. That’s the spirit of the lesson.
WVN: Any advice for artists?
JP: Go to a museum, look at many paintings; work in that style and keep working.
WVN: That’s how you became the great Jacques Pépin!
JP: I planned to stay in America for one year, and I’m still here, 60 years later.
WVN: We’re so fortunate you stayed—American cuisine has so much to thank you for.
WVN: OK, but wait. Can we please go back to bread and butter? This is important stuff. I’d love to know what kind of bread and what kind of butter.
JP: I have a friend in Old Saybrook, a Swiss guy, he’ll make me five or six baguettes, I can freeze those. Butter—years ago it was unsalted Land O’Lakes, but now you can get very good imported butters, like the ones from Normandy, France.
WVN: I love butter, so I had to ask.
JP: Yes, French butter is great when you can get it.
WVN: OK … how about the best drink you’ve ever tasted?
JP: Many things come to my mind. I was introduced to the martini by Craig Claiborne, the critic for The New York Times. I was visiting him in East Hampton; my mother was with us, and she wanted to try one. She absolutely thought it would be Martini Rossi, like the vermouth. She wondered why it was a white [clear] drink; where was the red vermouth? Well, she had two of those and she went to bed very happy. That was the early ’60s.
WVN: Yes, I’d go to bed happy after a couple of those, too. Your first martini really is unforgettable, isn’t it? … How about cocktails with food? How do you feel about cocktail pairings? Are you a wine-only-with-dinner kind of guy? Or are you open to cocktails with dinner?
JP: I do both. Last week, I had a dinner at Madison Beach Hotel paired with cocktails by Dale DeGroff [author of The Essential Cocktail and The Craft of the Cocktail] and it was excellent.
WVN: Lucky duck! Dale’s truly the best. How about your actual 90th birthday? How will you celebrate on the date?
JP: I’ll be in Connecticut with my daughter and my son-in-law, and we’ll go to dinner together.
WVN: Family dinner is a great plan. Is Rollie Wesen [your son-in-law] still at Johnson & Wales in Providence?
JP: Yes, and it’s he and Claudine who are responsible for setting up the 90/90 dinner series for my foundation [the Jacques Pépin Foundation]. That’s 90 dinners across the country with 90 chefs or restaurants, to raise funds to improve lives through culinary education. Not all of the dinners will be as extravagant as the one at French Laundry. We’ll have home-cooked dinners as well—those are important too.
WVN: You and your family are doing such great work. Can you tell me more about what the Jacques Pépin Foundation does?
JP: I like to teach people who’ve been disenfranchised. It’s important to work with people coming out of jail, people who have had a hard life. I teach them to cook, all through a community kitchen. I can teach them to wash salad, peel potatoes and do necessary kitchen tasks. These are the skills that can turn their lives around. We train them to work in small, ordinary restaurants; these are real kitchens. Not everything is fine dining. All kitchens rely on people to do this kind of work. [To learn more about the work of the Jacques Pépin Foundation, click here.]
WVN: What a smart model. Simple, but not so simple.
JP: Exactly. Kitchen work is hard work. When I was learning to cook, cooking wasn’t the celebrity profession that it is today. Chefs were not photographed or in the newspapers; that part is very new.
WVN: How long was it before you started getting noticed?
JP: In France, when I was growing up, the cook was at the bottom of the social scale, never had any interviews, things like this. From 1956 to 1958, I worked for the French President Charles de Gaulle and other heads of state, then I moved to the U.S. in 1959 and worked at Le Pavillon in New York. That was how I met Craig Claiborne. At the time, I turned down working for [President John F.] Kennedy at the White House to run research and development for Howard Johnson’s [restaurant chain, now defunct]. When I was asked to go to the White House, I don’t think I realized the potential.
WVN: But you’d already done that, in a sense; you’d already cooked for presidents.
JP: Yes, I had.
WVN: Was that the right move? What did you learn at Howard Johnson’s?
JP: At Howard Johnson’s, we had carte blanche. That was how I learned to manage a high-volume operation. In 1970, I opened La Potagerie in Manhattan, which served, say, 800 to 900 people a day, mainly soups and breads.
WVN: You mean, you learned to scale food production.
JP: Right, and that made it possible to work with places like the Russian Tea Room and then the World Trade Center. At the World Trade Center, we did more than 20,000 covers a day.
WVN: That’s impressive! You really played a role in scaling American food production.
JP: I was incredibly lucky. I was here [in the U.S.] for a year and I met Craig Claiborne, who reviewed Le Pavillon. It was Helen McCully who introduced me to James Beard; she spoke with him every day. Helen was an important figure; she was the food editor of McCall’s and House Beautiful. She showed me Julia’s [Child] manuscript, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It was Helen who asked me if I wanted to cook for Julia, and that was how I met her. I was very fortunate: I knew the trinity of American food within my first year in America: Craig Claiborne, Julia Child and James Beard.
WVN: Ah yes, the golden circle. You were at the right place at the right time. And all the while, you were drawing and painting and following both your muses.
JPL: Both painting and cooking are expressions of who I am.
WVN: In the new book [The Art of Jacques Pépin: Favorite Recipes and Paintings from My Life in the Kitchen (HarperCollins, 2025)], there’s a wide range of painting styles. I love the ink drawings of fruit and vegetables, the artichoke and the banana. Those feel so special to me. They’re quirky, seemingly simple, but they carry the essence of the ingredients. I love that about your sketches. Your menus carry that same smart, playful essence.
JP: The new book includes drawings, nudes from 1961,’62 and ’63—a more diverse collection than my other books. In 1980 my big book, The Art of Cooking, had 1,500 pictures across two parts [volumes]. I consider it the best book I’ve done … And, then there was The Art of the Chicken.
WVN: Ha! And it was just as important, right?
JP: Of course. I can’t fully explain it, but I just love chickens. And people love chickens. For that book, the publisher said, “Can we have recipes?” I didn’t want to do that, so that book is more of a story, spoken recipes. The new book has as many paintings as it has recipes.
WVN: That feels right, doesn’t it?
JP: Yes, I am a painter and a chef. Both are important to who I am.
WVN: I’m so glad you didn’t have to choose between the two.
JP: Why would I choose, if both are natural? I don’t have one style; I have several styles. In my new book, I didn’t choose the pictures; my publisher went through the archive. At one point, they wanted me to pair recipes with paintings, but for me it was only important for the dessert chapter to be paired with flowers. That felt right.
WVN: Your desserts and flowers pair beautifully. I like all of your styles. Do you feel like you’ve had major artistic influences?
JP: Sure—I like Picasso, Braques, the Impressionists … I’m always happy to go and see paintings. Whenever I’m traveling, if possible, I go to a museum.
WVN: That’s what I like to do, too.
JP: Whether it’s Barcelona or Monte Carlo, always go to the art museum if you can.
WVN: And paint whenever you can.
JP: Yes, I always continue. Like my big books of menus. Just a couple of weeks ago, Claudine asked what she had for her fifth birthday, and I could check the record.
WVN: Priceless … a life in menus.
JP: A life in pictures, a life in cooking.
WVN: What could be better than that?
JP: Exactly …
Willa Van Nostrand is an award-winning mixologist, beverage consultant, artist and owner of Little Bitte Artisanal Cocktails and World’s Fair Gallery. Visit her at LittleBitte.com.
