Inside Jacques Pepin Personal Life: His Marriage and Accident

Learn why Inside Jacques Pepin Personal Life: His Marriage and Accident is drawing attention in this detailed write-up.

Pépin was severely injured in 1974 while driving on a country road when a deer darted in front of his car and he swerved to escape it. His automobile collided with a deer, drove off the road, collided with a telephone pole, plunged into a ravine, and landed upside-down and on fire.

He had 14 bones fractured in his back, pelvis, and arms. His left arm was so seriously wounded that doctors wanted to amputate it at first. Pépin recovered, but his left shoulder’s mobility remained limited, and his left arm is several inches shorter than his right. Pépin writes in his book, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, that his injury made him realize he would be unable to continue working full-time.

Meanwhile, 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.