Chef, author, and artist, Jacques Pepin was born in 1935 and began his formal apprenticeship at age 13 at the Grand Hotel de l’Europe in his hometown of Bourg-en-Bresse, France. For two years he sharpened knives, refreshing the wood or coals, scaling fish. He was finally allowed to approach the stoves.
He moved to Paris at age 17 and worked at some of France’s most august restaurants including Plaza Athenee, Maxim’s, and Fouquet’s. By 1956 he began cooking in the French navy. He would serve as personal chef to three heads of state, including president Charles de Gaulle.
Jacques earned a master’s and a PhD at Columbia University while working at fellow Frenchman Henri Soue LePavillon. He was writing a history of food in the context of literature. He would write 30 cookbooks. In 2022 his watercolor book illustrations of chickens were painted by himself.
He would say that “You always learn wherever you are and if you want to move forward, you have to look at the positive things and move with it. Those decisions seem to be trivial at the time, but they change your life.”
In 1974 a car accident hitting a deer and flipping into a revine, caused him to break a dozen of his bones, broke his back, and was not sure he would ever walk again. But he survived and prospered.
He wed Gloria Augier in 1966 and she died in 2020. They had one child, Claudine Pepin. Pepin has lived in Connecticut since 1975.
In 1989 he was a partner with Julia Child and Rebecca Alssid to create a culinary certificate program within the Metropolitan College at Boston University. This effort led to the first, and still one of the few, master’s degree in Gastronomy. He has been a columnist for the New York Times and guest author for Gourmet, Food & Wine and many others.
Jacques has been honored with 24 James Beard Foundation Awards, five honorary doctoral degrees, the American Public Television’s lifetime achievement award, an Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Legion d’honneur, France’s highest order of merit. He received L’Order des Arts et des Lettres and the L’Ordre du Merite Agricole.
He has created the Jacques Pepin Foundation to support culinary education for adults with barriers to employment.
He has seemed to know what is worth taking along and what is worth handing down. This is the teacher in him. If it is a perfectly charred hot dog or a fresh yellow tomato, of a Cornish hen with asparagus, his hands perform the art of cooking with precision.
Pepin continues his cooking show now on public television and on social media and he exudes a quiet charm and a certain knowledge. He fashions some Crepes Suzette or a Cheese Souffle with a positive attitude and makes his viewers want to do the same. His paintings are beautiful and he has said that “I don’t always know what I am going to do when I begin. I get an idea and at some point, the painting takes hold of me.”
Let us hope he lives another 10 years, productive and terribly interesting, and… interested.