Pandemic Pivots that Stuck

PRESS Chef Philip Tessier Considers Covid’s Lessons

Philip Tessier, chef and partner at St. Helena’s PRESS restaurant, labeled the period from March 2020 to March 2021 as a crucible, a concentrated period of incessant change that tested every skill he had as restaurateur and chef.

Like other restaurants, PRESS went from full bore to takeout-only to reopening for outdoor dining, then went seven days outdoor-only then added indoor dining and lunch service, before being shut down entirely in July, reopening for outdoor-only service during August and September’s Wine Country fires, before being forced to close again entirely over the holidays, typically the busiest season of the year. And, Tessier himself came down with Covid in October of 2020.

“I’ve never felt more responsible for people’s livelihoods,” Tessier says. “December was the hardest because we already knew how difficult it would be.” He held up his hand. “That’s four times in 2020 we closed and reopened the restaurant. The staffing, morale and health and safety of guests, not to mention the financial side always bearing down….” To say it was a tough year hardly expresses the depth of experience of anyone who survived it.

A CHEF EMERGES

One of Tessier’s many abilities is to lean into the lessons born of struggle. During his childhood, most TV was not permitted. So Tessier watched cooking shows and cooked with his mom, learning to create multi-layered dishes with her guidance. At the hands of a television Luddite, Tessier’s spark for the culinary world was ignited. Where other kids turned to sports or building model airplanes, Tessier dove into the world of restaurants, seeking work as a teen at a local restaurant in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia. He loved the work, finding the restaurant’s natural interplay of front of the house and back of the house to make a coherent whole fascinating.

Perhaps it was inevitable that, after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, Tessier sought out culinary experiences that matched his interest in layers of flavor and exceptional dishes. After interning at restaurants in France and at Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin in New York, he found a place within the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group (TKRG) as poissonier (fish cook) at New York’s then-about-to-open Per Se.

That was 2004. Tessier built a career within TKRG, taking on the role of chef de cuisine at Yountville’s Bouchon, and, later, executive sous chef at The French Laundry. Though Tessier thrived in New York, Northern California gave him and his wife, Rachel, and their growing family the opportunity to create a lifestyle that was more in tune with how they wanted to live. Within TKRG and The French Laundry’s hallowed halls, Tessier found a professional mentor in Thomas Keller, a community of like-minded chefs and a working environment that matched his focus, ambition and growing technical skills.

LEARNING TO COMPETE

Keller, meanwhile, at the encouragement of legendary French chef Paul Bocuse, was part of a group of chefs working in America that sought to build the infrastructure needed to mentor young chefs, as well as train them to compete in rigorous culinary competitions such as the Bocuse d’Or, founded by Bocuse in 1987. The organization they formed, Ment’or, encourages chefs from around the country to apply to compete in the Team USA National Selection Event, a critical steppingstone to competing at the biennial Bocuse d’Or event in Lyon, France. The winning team trains full-time for a year in Yountville, guided by coaches and advisors, before the Lyonnaise competition.

When Tessier applied for, trained for and won the National Selection event, his year-long training for the competition in Lyon took place at the Bocuse House, two doors down from The French Laundry, a home where Chef Keller’s father once lived. “It had no dishwasher,” Tessier recalled, grinning at the hours he spent cleaning dishes while prepping to cook for the Bocuse d’Or.

Tessier himself is better at describing the details of training for the Bocuse d’Or. His book, Chasing Bocuse, describes his journey and the hours, days and months of toil and uncertainty. With his commis (student chef) Skylar Stover and immeasurable support from Ment’or and TKRG, Tessier went on to win silver at the 2015 Bocuse d’Or, the first podium placement ever for an American team. At 2017’s Bocuse d’Or, Tessier served as a coach for the American team, helping guide them to gold. To take silver and gold in in consecutive years of the tournament— the Olympics of cooking—shocked the culinary world. The United States had arrived, and Chef Tessier’s name achieved a new stature among chefs and culinarians.

BUILDING SOMETHING NEW YET FAMILIAR

Chef Tessier has never been averse to hard work. The crucible of the Bocuse d’Or and weathering the recession caused by the 2007 financial crisis right as Bouchon completed a remodel each helped prepare him for the difficulties of Covid. “The experiences of 2020 made us smarter, more adept at what we do,” Tessier says.

Now a co-owner of PRESS with Samantha Rudd, Tessier had only come on board as a consultant with PRESS in September 2019, just months before Covid shuttered California. Rudd, too, had experienced profound change. She lost Rudd Farms on Mount Veeder, in the Nuns Fire in October 2017. Her father, Leslie Rudd, passed in May 2018. PRESS was Leslie’s personal ode to Napa, a celebration of his Napa Valley community, a steakhouse with fine wine and lovingly sourced ingredients. Rudd needed a skilled chef and one with the same level of commitment to the Napa community. She found it in Tessier.

But Tessier knew that a steakhouse was not his passion. Could he rebuild PRESS into the creative outlet he sought? Neither Tessier nor the St. Helena community were sure. Covid, however, provided the path.

That old adage “invention is the mother of necessity” might be the new PRESS mantra. The restaurant’s myriad pivots empowered a different sort of creativity. “We evolved and changed as we tried to figure out how to survive,” Tessier said. Lunch was added as a survival tool born from a temporary drive-through pickup program. The kitchen staff was rejiggered to manage the workload. Both changes are now permanent. After a fire destroyed nearby neighbor Meadowood in September 2020, Meadowood Chef Chris Kostow reached out: Would Phil like to work with the overflowing bounty of the Meadowood garden and help support the farm’s team? Yes, he would, and that partnership will be sustained for the foreseeable future. Dishes like a Meadowood farm greens salad and Alaskan halibut with Romano beans and squash blossoms were designed around Meadowood’s produce.

BACON AND THE GRUMPY OLD MEN’S CLUB

Recrafting other menu items sometimes meant unspooling the community’s expectations. A hidden menu item of bacon hung by metal pins from a rack and presented with scissors and tongs may have been gimmicky, but locals in the know loved it. Wineries sent people to PRESS specifically to experience this dish. So Tessier created a new pork dish as addictive as the bacon: sweet and sour pig ears. Brined and braised, tossed with flour and fried and served with an espelette sweet and sour sauce, “it’s super-addictive,” according to Tessier.

Leslie Rudd’s PRESS had regulars, warmly referred to as the Grumpy Old Men’s Club, who frequently ask for off-menu items like a baked potato or a chopped salad, as well as the bacon. Tessier tested the sweet and sour pig ears on the Grumpy Old Men. “We told the staff that, if people ask for the bacon, encourage them to try it and if they don’t like it, it’s on us.” According to Tessier, 90% love it. “Not only did they help us find our way through, the group is a reminder to not take ourselves too seriously,” Tessier says.