>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> daniel is here.

his flagship restaurant is celebrating its 20th birthday this year. certain times has said restaurants can not down the barriers between you and happiness for a few hours. every taste seems to transport you to another world. i am pleased to have you back. hello, charlie. how are you? >> why call it my french cuisine? >> i do not think that you could take the french out of me. i was born and raised on the farm. of what we had on the table every day was coming from the garden, coming from the farm. we were doing the farmers market once a week and offering that. >> of the ingredients are one thing. cuisine? about fresh is it the way you cook?

>> today, every country has their own cuisine. the formation of many cuisines are based on french cuisine. especially when you get to a and complexomic expression. even the greatest chef of spain or the greatest chef everywhere, the greatest chef in america, is onekeller -- well, he of them. there are many others. i think it is also cooking french. definitely his vision. it is definitely based on french cuisine. style ofe french cooking, what goes into cooking? >> i have learned that from the

1970's in france. changing the face of french cuisine at the time. that -- >> who is responsible for that? >> many french chefs. 1970's, they started to come here, early 1980's in america. chefsf the greatest developed themselves here and are today expanding the cuisine in america. i think it is wonderful what we have been accomplishing in the last 20 years in america. i think we have an amazing, passionate, young chef who will help us deliver the cuisine.

europe was the country to be asked. today, they are looking in and trying to bring a more cosmopolitan -- >> which raises this question, which you have heard before. 20n you opened danielle years ago, that was your baby. >> i worked hard for that one. >> you bet. and you were successful. define a kind of philosophy so that you do not have to be there and it has the same quality? in new york, you go to all of your restaurants. danielle,he dna of

even in the most casual restaurant. even in the retail store. i am very concerned about what we do every day. team.about the it is not about one individual. even if you have an individual chef in the kitchen, he cannot touch everything that makes the experience to dine in that restaurant. it depends how organized you are and how much you trust your team, how much you stay in touch , closely, with them. and how much you give them the chance and having the right team and the right tools to work with. i think i have been blessed. i have wonderful people working for me. i spent most of my time with new we were only open at night. during the day, i visit the other restaurants and stay in touch with my chef. i am not the only creator of

everything in the restaurant. i think that would get to stale -- too stale. home, is itcook at the same as cooking in the restaurant? >> no. , the recipeot meal of a chicken casserole. because i start with what is going to take the longest and is going to bring the most flavor and finish, little by little. within 45 minutes, i am ready for everyone. >> talk about wine. >> wine is the most important equation when we talk about french cuisine. we can talk about french wine or wine in general. the way french cuisine has been the foundation to many other -- france hasch been the foundation for many other wine countries.

and wine is -- i could not think of dining without drinking wine. >> nor can i. >> it is the most magical thing to have a wonderful meal and it is made to pair with a perfect wine. it'sis funny because sometimes the wind first. you choose the wine first. let's say you are going to have a special dinner. and thene the wine create the meal around the wine. or you choose a dish on the menu and i will suggest a wine to go best with it. >> tell me about sugar and spices. >> that is very important for me. french cuisine is about balance and seasoning to go very well with wine. it is important that the seasoning does not damage the wine. seasoning and spice is the most

difficult thing to teach a young cook. take athe service, you piece of fish or a piece of meat and you are going to have to add the seasoning just before you cook it. the cook has to be able to measure with two or three fingers, what is the seasoning? and he is going to have to do it on the spur of the moment to make sure it is not about big, over-seasoned, as much as perfectly seasoned. a very good chef is very precise. >> what should we say about cheese? mostday, we have the palatable section of -- selection of cheese in america. cheese in america as good

as cheese in france? >> oh, yes. i am going to milwaukee to do the book to her -- tour. i am looking forward to visiting the cheese farms there. she is today, i mean, we have some wonderful cheese locally and nationally. danielle,ese tray at half french, half american, very much like everything i do. >> stock is important. what is that? >> it is what fortifies the preparation. brace --fortify a braise. you will settle it by reduction. you will fortify a preparation. duck is -- it takes a long time. you cannot tell where

it is. >> you call it the flavor foundation of french cuisine. >> very much. >> let's talk about bill buford. he has been on this program and did this whole thing with mario in italy. his book was called "heat." , after or five years ago which wasduced "heat" an amazing success, he said he wanted to go to france. i think everyone talks about french cuisine, but no one knows, they never lived there. he moved to leon with his kids and the two boys and they have spent the last four years there. living there full-time?

>> living there full-time, being an apprentice, being a chef, visiting a lot of restaurants but also producers and important people who make the french cuisine. >> what is he trying to do? was kind of jealous that he was cooking with those french in france and he did not cook with me. i invited bill to come to new york and i told him, i want to cook with you and i want to cook recipes you may not have done in france. recipes that are meaningful to me for what french cuisine represents but also recipes with a bit of a reference to the past. that is what we did for three weeks together in new york. we cooked and produced those recipes. said, wanted from bill, i

i do not want you to hold a pen and watch me cooking. you are going to cook next to me and we are going to video everything and you can go home and write what you want to. that is what we did together. it is aw york, because melting pot, a great place to be for restaurants? about thingse talk happening with chefs. i feel i am 25 minutes away from paris biplane and i feel very far away from transcript i never i am becomingess danish, i am never going to be french in this country. coming to america and being in new york, i can stay french and i can be an american. thatere is also a notion france is becoming a museum.

that france has lost itself. , i think we are still very relevant. admitf the chefs will not but, besides traveling the world europe and different countries, france and italy are certainly the two countries where we are looking at cooking honor the reing to gion where you live. >> i mean, they talk about wine. >> exactly. we are trying to see in america today in every city. they are trying to pull the best out of what they have. i think that is what france has always been. >> congratulations. the book is called "daniel, my

french cuisine." >> one of the world's most renowned and innovative chefs. he revolutionized the concept of eating. >> welcome. ♪ >> i am pleased to have him back at this table. i am glad to have his interpreter as well. what is the foundation? project.a its slogan is, "feeding creativity." motivating people to create. using cooking as a tool. dialogue among other disciplines.

it is made up of three projects. 46, dna. there is no frame of reference. laban be kind of a media for astronomy that you can visit when you are a small child to understand what the creative process is. dna is a creative team that is there in the lab. everything they create will be spread on the internet. media is a reflection on information and knowledge. in a world where the internet has changed all of those. what is the information that we have? what knowledge do we have to have in any disciplines?

chef, one one part part scientist, one part artist. how did you become that way? >> i am just a neighborhood kid that did not go to university. i gave classes at harvard. it would not be logical before. the only thing i have done is learn. ask about the why of things. always why, why, why. because i have passion and there are challenges that i always believe i am not going to reach. but i strive to achieve them. in the end, that is what life

is. a struggle to reach a challenge. but also, the cooking, which is a wonderful discipline. , ourse millions of years brains got bigger and that is how we are what we are today, food. happened over 2 million cooking?relation to there are a few things that we were able to make back then but we did not have the intelligence to create a lot of things. when you look at cooking and -- amongtionship humans, the first creativity was cooking. the foundation, we are going to be asking ourselves these questions.

>> the number one chef in the world. you had a restaurant that people begged to come to. reservations took many months. you gave that up. you closed the door. because you said you wanted to for the nextcy generation. closed it as a restaurant. said to transform it, we could look ahead and see that maybe in five years, we were going to decline. a creative decline. somissed the creative chaos that that would not happen. especially because we are 50

years old. i am very good friends with the vice president. he was telling me, do you know that you are going to die? what is going to happen then with all of this? what is going to happen with the legacy? again, the restaurant is ephemeral. how are you going to do this? we started constructing the foundation. space.range the restaurant opens or closes. it does not get transformed. constructing every day. it is great. people will come from other discipline, from any , where we will compare and share the creative process. better to work in the morning or the evening? teams or one to

three people? how do you make up the team? how do you teach mental strength to 18? -- to a team? how do the spaces have to be to create a space? all of my experiences, i want to share. --david, our mutual friend we had a meal together. he says this is an inspiration to chefs to constantly and continually question the status quo. >> when we had the restaurant open, i do not like to talk too much about what it meant. now that it is closed, i am a little more free to think about what i thought about the place. on my part, it is already covered.

otherwise, it would have been called the audria foundation. it is not because the restaurant was created by a lot of people. the people who passed through there, people like david chang, even though he did not work there, we believe that what we were doing there was making cuisine evolve. when you look at the people who have passed through that are today the most influential chefs in the world, we knew something special was going on. sharing,onesty, liberty, freedom, passion. in any kind of business, it is the dream that the whole team would have. and this is the strength of the

restaurant. chefs,ere a lot of young not so much the dishes themselves, but the philosophy. images in these seven books. analysis,ionary 2005-2007. take a look at this. >> this is a cocktail. we started to understand and do solid cocktails. a fashion.s kind of the cocktail world has been revolutionized because of creative cocktails. >> the next one is dish 2. >> this one is magic. a green almond, you would cover

it like a vegetable and make like a juice. you would juice it. no one had done it before. >> dish three. >> it is a desert created -- dessert created by his brother. the concept is nature. they are roots. it is one of the most imitated styles in the world, in the pastry world. it is copying nature in the page three -- in the pastry world. >> and we now have dish 4. >> this is so incredible. they are roses. you can actually eat these roses. people were like, roses? as if it were a vegetable. what is an artichoke?

it is a flower. and roses are too. ,f we treat it like a vegetable we treat it like a vegetable here. it was magic. he thinks it is the first time in history that they did this. evolution one. >> within the work that we are doing now. when did cooking start? how do we understand it today? we were talking to archaeologists, anthropologists, we were studying it. because why? can boil things, fry things, do things. we did not have these tools. we have agricultural brains. flowers, you have livestock, ranching, milk, and derivatives,

eggs, you have crackers and trees. nomads when weg become sedentary. eat, and thatld is a theory -- well, it is very marks the path of the study for the future. >> evolution number two. >> to get this theory sort of set up, there is no photo. it is from half a million years ago. how can i visualize it? imagine eating fruit. i draw in the mornings and get up at 7:00 in the morning. what is this?

it is a story i would imagine in my mind. this was the exposition that we did and now it is going to los angeles in may. this visualizing. >> the next one is color evolution. >> a reflection of the homemade trees that give fruits or produce fruits. where are their origins? thousands, evolution and nature. this made me think. ago, there were very few vegetables and fruits. everything was mixed and hybridizied and it changed genetics in a slow way.

nectarine isng -- a a mix of peach and plum. this has been the history. i imagined how it has been evolving. >> thank you for coming. ♪

>> i am pleased to have brian acheson and dennis keller at this table. how did you meet? letter saying i wanted to work at the french laundry for months and months and he only said yes. i think there were probably 15. >> what would you say? ranged from i really feel passionate about working for you and i love the french laundry from what i have seen and read. saidly, he called me and why do you keep writing me these letters? [laughter] and it worked. he probably brings the same

passion to cooking to getting a job with you. >>. it really shows with what he .oes >> it was life-changing. not only from a culinary point of view but from figuring out how you are going to live the rest of your life, meeting people that are still in my life today. it was monumental to becoming who i am. >> did you know it at that moment? >> no. but as the whole thing unraveled, the 40 half years the i was there, being -- four and a half years i was there, being meant toward by chef and ultimately becoming great friends, it was a most

important step in my career. >> do you spot the ones that have something special? >> yeah, certainly, you can tell there is something special there when somebody comes into your kitchen and works. a naturaleir ability, ability, whether it is the way they walk into the kitchen of the way they hold their knife or the way they clean their station. you know, just the way they handle food. there is a sense of respect. >> it shows a respect. >> there is somebody who is going to be great. withu also work [indiscernible] in his kitchen. chef set up a site for me. we -- nothing about the about louie.

a weekd you should spend in this kitchen because of your curiosity and your knack for looking beyond what is right in front of us. -- you know, go there at the time as a sous chef at the french laundry was considered the best restaurant in the world. there was a certain arrogance, a certain ego that a have -- that a young man has, a young chef. when i walked into the kitchen outside of barcelona, everything was new. language, thee cooking techniques were things that were very unfamiliar. it was incredibly humbling. to it made me come back the u.s. and question what exactly i wanted to do with cooking. >> and the answer? >> the answer was to do exactly what chef did, which is forge

your own path. it would have been very easy for me to go out and open a keller food.d cook oblie and doing something very different, i realized i needed to do what i want to do, how i want to express my way through was he. >>. -- through cuisine. and seeu look at him his friend his passion and think of myself? about ourng profession is that there is an attachment to history. i look at the chefs that came before me, the chefs that taught and you see a little bit of yourself and them as well and you hope that they see a little bit of them and you.

so we pass on this connection to cooking, nurturing people from generation to generation to generation. yeah, i think we all see that. it's about community. i don't think there is another profession that has such a strong bond, not just with the generation they are a part of that also with the previous generation and the following generation. >> this is a clip. i think this is you talking. >> there is so much going on in terms of upside that i am afraid to turn any of it down. i was talking to heather last night when i got home and 3:00 in the morning and she says to me, what are you doing? you almost died. don't forget you almost died three years ago. cancer,hat have stage 4 they don't sleep four hours a night. they sleep eight because that is

what their doctors tell them they are supposed to do so the cancer does not come back. you are sleeping four hours a night. that is ridiculous. you're going to kill yourself. you have two kids. you have me. and i look at her and i can't argue with her. i can't say no, you are not right, because she is right here in but right now, the opportunity is too great. in a wayg is lining up that i have never seen a lineup before. it is going to help me change my most wild fantasies, the most prominent life goals i have ever had or it's going to kill me. i'm not sure which, and i don't really care. >> here you are. [laughter] tell me about what you said. , if people are truly passionate about what they do and really wholeheartedly ,elieve in it, as i mentioned

you almost don't have a choice. not that you don't want to make a choice, but it catapults you into this energy, into this passion, into this sense of being that, if you weren't doing it, you would feel unfulfilled. >> what are you most proud of? >> charlie, i have been blessed to have so many things that i am proud of. i think what i am most proud of is the next generation. they are continuing this quest for -- i don't want to say greatness, but to bring to america, our culture and our

society, really wonderful connection through the table and to each other. let's face it, at the end of the day, the experience around the table is about those individuals that the table. and to be able to offer wonderful food in a great setting so that they can come together, loved ones can come together, family, friends can come together and experience something that is compelling and resonates with them. that is something we can all be proud of. >> how do you to differ -- how do you two differ? [laughter] >> age. [laughter] >> i think we look at it very similarly. but there is a generation gap that makes it different. where chef'ss, food was maybe more based on

classic western european thatique and then he took american ingenuity and creativity and whimsical , where me, now it is way about trying to find my ti create tgat next asked that next genre of cooking. it is difficult for me to say when he is sitting across the table from a. [laughter] >> i love it. every moment i love. >> in the 90's, in the late 1990's and early 2000's, and ,ven up to this point per se they have solidified brands and a repertoire of cuisine and a

baseline of excellence. so now the next generation that he spoke of, we are trying to define ourselves. and we know that we have to make it different. so what do we do? what do we utilize to carve out our own identity? >> let's first talk about cancer before we go. answer of the tongue -- cancer of the tongue. when you found out, what did you say? i've got to fight this. was -- you know, i was 33 when i got diagnosed. at that point, i had been working in kitchens all my life and working 16 to 18 hours a day. at that point, you still feel like you are invincible. i didn't feel like i was 33. i felt like i was 23.

faced with that severity of an illness, it takes you back. you would never think that would happen at that point. >> and during the midst of your dream. >> you are right. alinea.ust opened gourmet magazine had named this best in the country. we were busy and everything was going really well. and you get hit with that news. but, like you are saying, much in the same way that we approach every day going into the kitchen , where you basically have to climb the mountain every day when you go into the kitchen, i said to myself, well, another mountain that i have to climb. mountain. a steep

but, you know, it is doable. >> how are you today? >> fine. a little over five years out of treatment, the doctors now are telling me that the chances of me getting any type of cancer are similar to anyone else on the planet getting cancer. with thething university of chicago and the way the approach medicine is exactly like we would think about food. it apart it, taking piece by piece, and then putting it back together. they did it in such a smart way that it was organ preservation, the priority, and then saving life. they accomplished both. >> congratulations.

good to have you here at the table. thank you, tom. >> thank you. >> gabrielle hamilton is here. her life growing up prepared her for everything she is today. thefrench mother scoured force for mushrooms and taught her to eat very well. her father taught her to create beauty where none exists. gabriel --t to have gabrielle hamilton. >> it is a little bit of a bait and switch. is about life. if you have ever been married -- [laughter] you might find something in here if you have ever been a parent. if you are a doctor or -- you might find something in this book if you have urquhart -- if you have worked hard in an industry. all not so much about food

the context of my life. it is littered with food. >> it is the constant game of life. >> yes. >> the two parents that you had taught you different things because of who they were. >> yes. all that discipline and thrift from my french mother who was a belly dancer. she taught us to eat really. she was unafraid of the woods and quite knowledgeable in them. she would take us out and hunt for chanterelle mushrooms and she would pick the fiddlehead ferns and ferns and would take us to get milk and had to cook --- nose-tail -- noe to-tail.

so i got everything i could from the animal and getting everything from the land. my father was very generous. >> he was also an artist. >> that's right. he sees everything in that watercolor, romantic way. he was a set designer. the scenery was a big thing for him. the lighting, the way people would stand. >> they split up when you were 12 or 13. >> right in there. it was a not so gradual process. i was 11 when they split and 12 or 13 by the time they got the whole thing really dismantled. >> here's what is interesting about that to me. they almost forgot. he -- forgot parenting. they went their own way for getting they left you and your brother. >> there was a rough summer there. there are five kids. i am the youngest of five. in line andher i got ditched at the house for a

summer. that was a defining moment. that was the end of childhood for sure. the family never reconvened after that summer. it all started than. my self-reliance and getting a job and all that stuff started at a young age. ask when did cooking start? -- >> when did cooking start? >>. [laughter] we had to eat. andarted to raid the pantry open strange jars here and i started washing dishes at a local restaurant. you know how that goes. you are in the right place at the right time and they need an extra set of hands. you start washing dishes but they need to many and sally. quickly, you are doing salad and then there is someone who does not show up on the line one day and you are doing the hot line stuff. it is kind of like a downward spiral. [laughter] >> but you develop skills. >> that's right. >> you became wild.

>> that's true. [laughter] there are a few experiences i would have been glad not to have that we will not talk about. >> why not. >> because you are not going to get that out of me. i did not write that in the book and you will not get it now. leave a 12-year-old on the border of adolescents alone -- >> they are going to try everything. >> they are going to get themselves into some deep do do. abet take me to the experience of getting to print between the time you are 18 or 20. were, yourwhere you experiences include the darkness of the dark and, at the same time, the most aspirational of anyone. graduate school, mfa. >> i did educate myself. i have been educated. that's true.

thatyou asked me earlier i was hell-bent getting into drugs, i don't know that i was really getting into drugs or -- it was just part of the time. nothing sunk in so deeply. i think on the border verge of true delinquency and stared at it. scared. i was working at the lone star and was charged with grand larceny. >> but you were a child and you got off. >> but that was a pretty pivotal moment that i understood that that was something i was practicing for or working to be. being truly bad ass was about to unfold in front of me and i was sobered by that. play around the edge and then the edge says, come on, talk the talk -- walk the talk. , i wasry profound way

alone for two years, traveling around with only myself to rely on for money, for getting from place to place, and it was an incredible time of deliverance. i think that might be the word. >> it's a good word. >> i purged everything. all my bad thoughts, all my sadnesses, all my falsehoods, all my false starts. and when i came back, i was ready to hit it, hit the road, go, get on with life in a regular way. >> i used to think and would ask questions like do you regret it or are you sorry you went there? i have heard from so many people who have said to me, i had to go through that to be where i am. it's like going through a bad passage because, only by going through the bad passage would you reach the place.

>> i have never regretted anything and that is a good life to live, without any regrets. or it's better to regret what you have done and not what you have done. my time here so far on earth have not all been so dark and bad and get through to the other side, to the other shore. that almost two-your backpack trip around the world was filled with richness and happiness and discovery and learning things. >> you didn't have much money when you did this either. [laughter] >> very little cash. broke and often starving and the drive old and nervous, frequently nervous about the next meal. think there was one period, in the period of five days i had aten salted pumpkin seeds, robert onion and a glass of warm dry vermouth over five days. [laughter] >> tell me about the time you

met the guy that you were thinking about a restaurant and a guy came up to you who had a great place that he had to show you. >> i was running out to park the car one morning in the east village. iran passed this abandoned restaurant on my block. the guy who lived in the building upstairs from this space, eric, he was sitting out in front of it shattered -- shuttered. he said, hey, are you still cooking? i sort of am. i had tried to get out of this business and had just gotten back from getting my mfa at that, well, i will give it a shot a little longer, trying to be a writer and i get back in the kitchen. but he opened the gate and we walked through and it was covered in rat extra mint. -- rat excrement. thatned a box of apples

had become just black dust. it all swamped up into my eyelashes and nostrils. yet i could see that it had charm. as you know, it is much cleaner now. [laughter] it has been blasted. >> but you saw it. >> i could tell. >> it had tile in it. >> it had a look that was familiar to me. it had been a french bistro. it had some of that feeling that was very familiar. it was also small. i felt, as a first restaurant, i could manage something like that. >> 12 seats or something like that >? >> it has 30 seats. the stove a small. i felt, i can do this. i will what a few things. i will have myself and a dishwasher.

there will be some nice girl at the door. it has now turned into lunch, brunch, dinner, 30 employees. [laughter] >> this is where you met the man who became your husband. >> i did. andalked this italian man he starts eating the food and exclaiming out loud. this is exactly like my mother used to make. [laughter] i think he kind of fell in love with the food and then may somehow. >> and you? >> i was unsure in the beginning. it took maybe five or six years to really get into the marriage. we were having an affair and that part was great. we ate well together and the other thing. we were great at that. [laughter] eating and that were never our problem. [laughter] but a marriage is more than that. >> but you don't live together. >> we have never lived together.

we had a two-year experiment in brooklyn where we live together and that answered that question. >> you said you would like to grow old in italy. >> wouldn't you? >> i would like to grow the new york. >> i want to be that woman in the black worn sweater, with ,he, wiens -- the father wiens with her grandchildren running around. it looks so simple. >> is that what you like? you are romantic at heart. >> i know. but the italians take care of their old ladies. [laughter] it's good to the older woman there, i think. [speaking italian] the old chicken makes good broth. [laughter] that is the kind of culture i can appreciate that thinks that way. >> thank you. >> thanks for having me.

>> this is "taking stock" for tuesday, august 26, 2014. i am pimm fox. today's theme is fixing what's wrong. time to get ready to go back to school. a university that has no fixed campus and is less expensive. u.s. dealmakers flex their muscles against foreign manufacturers. a trade tirade. we will explain. what about a fix for your stiff neck or sore shoulders? wellbiz is designed to meet the