ESCOFFIER QUESTIONNAIRE: Chef Roland Passot

Chef Roland Passot has had the career length and depth to have his own Wikipedia page. “Maybe my daughter made that,” he says with charming humility. So, perhaps many readers know he was the owner and chef of La Folie, an iconic San Francisco restaurant that maintained its absolute Frenchness while also being so very Bay Area.

Chef Passot and his wife, Jamie, closed La Folie in March 2020 in order to spend less time on the line and on their feet and, by chance, narrowly avoided mandatory Covid shutdowns. This is definitely not retirement, though. “I like things fast,” he says.

His restaurant group, Vine Hospitality, runs Left Bank Brasserie, LB Steak, Meso Modern Mediterranean and Petite Left Bank in Tiburon, which is where we sat for our conversation. “I like to ride my bike here,” he says. Please hear his answers in the melodious canter of southwestern French, as Passot has held fast to his Villefranche-sur-Mer accent.

Did you grow up cooking?

I guess it started with my grandfather. He had a humongous garden. I would spend summertime there, get up at 5am and work in the garden and then, at 8am, we have “casse-croûte” [snack] of pig ear and snout, the leftovers. My paternal grandmother, who I never met, was known as a very good cook. The village priest would come and ask her to cook for the mayor or important visitors. Maybe my passion came from her.

When I started cooking professionally at 15, it was the time when Paul Bocuse and others were in the spotlight—the first time chefs were on a pedestal. Before that, chefs had the reputation more of drunks.

Some of my early jobs I was getting the fire going, putting in the wood, in the morning. We work through lunch, get ready for dinner, take a little break, then come back, prepare dinner, work until 10 or midnight. That was the life of a cook. So seeing that chefs were meeting presidents gave me ambition. I wanted to work with the best and maybe become that category of chef someday.

Did you start working for the best?

I worked for Chef Paul Lacombe. My last mentor in Lyon was Pierre Orsi and he was just arriving back from the 95th in Chicago. He brought wild rice in his suitcase and we served it with squab. It was 1975, so it was very avant-garde.

How did you end up in the U.S.?

Chef Orsi’s best friend, Chef Jean Banchet, was opening Le Francais, just outside Chicago, and he told me I should go and get that experience. They lost my luggage and I didn’t speak a word of English. I tried to call someone collect and I couldn’t even understand the operator. Finally someone arrived to get me.

Banchet was a tyrant, every which way. We arrived at 7am, left at 1am, six days a week. Screaming the whole time. One night, he threw a lamb saddle in my face and we got into a fistfight, separated by the maître d’. At the end of the service, he shook my hand and I became king of the kitchen. He never screamed at me again. We became friends after that.

Restaurants are such a stressful environment.

Very stressful. But I became like him and even worse. It’s like an abused child that becomes the abuser. I learned that was how you show control. I did learn from my mistakes eventually.

Then I opened Le Castel in San Francisco and that is where my head exploded. I was 24 and I was in Time magazine, Newsweek. All the movie stars were coming from L.A. to eat at Le Castel. I was buying produce from France, sturgeon from Japan. I went to the airport to pick up my groceries. Imagine the food cost! They decided to close the restaurant. But that was before California Cuisine really started, before Alice Waters was Alice Waters.

And then back to Dallas?

Then I worked for Jean [Banchet] again. He brought me to Dallas in 1981 to open the French Room. I met Michael Bauer [former food critic of the San Francisco Chronicle] when he was still in Texas. He called me “the bad boy of Dallas.” I had carte blanche. One day I lost my job because of my temper. It was Dallas so they escorted me out at gunpoint. I was a nutcase. That never happened to me again.

Did you want to open your own place?

I wanted to open my own place and get revenge. But people made sure that didn’t happen. So I did catering with a friend and we did some great parties—for Ross Perot, prime ministers. I met my wife in Dallas and she worked for us a bit.

We got married and I started to change. I had offers in San Francisco and New York but we just got married so we wanted that quality of life. Michael Bauer had moved to San Francisco. I went to Chez Michele but they decided to close it without giving it a chance. They wanted me to buy them out.

And finally, La Folie.

After Michele closed I had a little party at the house to figure out what I could do. Gerald Hirigoyen [now the chef and owner of San Francisco’s Pipérade] had worked for me at Le Castel.

And he still liked you.

Well, I’m sure he had some stories. His soon-to-be partner had a place on Polk Street called Le Camargue and it wasn’t doing well. I met with this Jean-Baptiste. He wanted $200K. I said, “Let’s not go back and forth. I have $45K and I don’t really want to give it to you. I want to use it to redo the place.” He agreed to do balloon payment in a year. I paid the interest and the rent and he was my banker. That was 1988.

The first few years were difficult, with the earthquake. Michael Bauer wrote about us in Food & Wine. He always helped me with a good article but he would slap us when we needed to be slapped. Once for service. He was the one who told me I needed to update the decor. He said, “Your food is four-star but you need to show that you are four- star.” He pushed me.

And now you run a hospitality group.

It’s all about teaching a sense of urgency. I cannot stand it when I see something that is not right. If a customer is waving their hand, it is already too late. Restaurants are a lot of chemistry. The soul is what makes the restaurant. The important thing is to find those key people in key positions that run it like their own. Then there is that magic.

These days I do philanthropy events, or dinners for small groups. I like to be part of operations, managing food costs. The first thing I do when I come into one of my restaurants is shake everyone’s hands. People need to feel respected.

Marissa La Brecque is the director of Hanna Institute and the creator of the Escoffier Questionnaire for Edible Marin & Wine Country.

“It’s all about teaching a sense of urgency. I cannot stand it When I see something that is not right. If a customer is waving their hand, it is already too late. ”