All You Need to Know About Jacques Pépin

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Pépin rose to prominence as a chef while serving in the military from 1956 to 1958. As a result, he was assigned to the Treasury Department. As a result, he was appointed as the personal chef of three French presidents, including Charles de Gaulle. Pépin traveled to the United States in 1959 to work at Le Pavillon in New York City.

One of the restaurant’s regulars was businessman Howard Johnson, who hired Pépin to assist him in developing cuisine lines for his eponymous restaurant chain. Pépin took this job instead of becoming John F. Kennedy’s White House chef. For ten years, he was the director of research and development for Howard Johnson. During this time, Pépin launched La Potagerie, a gourmet soup restaurant and lunch counter in Manhattan.

Pépin rose to prominence in the mid-1970s after dabbling in literature, culinary instruction, and television. He appeared on game shows like “What’s My Line?” and “To Tell the Truth,” and he taught cooking workshops at cooking schools and stores across the country. Pépin published his first cookbook, “La Technique,” in 1976, followed by “La Methode” in 1979.

A few years later, he was appointed dean of the French Culinary Institute, a newly created culinary school in New York City. Pépin premiered his first television series on Jacksonville, Florida’s local PBS station the same year he started in that post. He proceeded to publish successful cookbooks and also became a New York Times columnist and guest author for several food magazines

In the 1990s, Pépin’s popularity grew on television. He debuted his series “Today’s Gourmet,” which was recorded in San Francisco, California, early in the decade. He and his chef friend Julia Child participated in 90-minute PBS specials taped in front of live audiences in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1994 and 1996.

Also in 1996, Pépin debuted three television shows starring his adult daughter Claudine, for which the couple received James Beard Foundation Awards. “Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home,” which began in 1999 as another collaboration with Julia Child, was perhaps Pépin’s most well-known series. The show received a James Beard Foundation Award as well as a Daytime Emmy Award.

Over the years, Pépin has appeared in a variety of different food shows, including “The Complete Pépin,” “Jacques Pépin: Fast Food My Way,” and “Jacques Pépin Heart & Soul.” He also served as a guest judge on season five of the reality show “Top Chef.” Pépin was the subject of the 2017 PBS documentary “Jacques Pépin: The Art of Craft.”