In 2005, New York magazine called Jean-Georges Vongerichten the most influential chef in shaping how New Yorkers dine and how chefs cook.
Vongerichten oversees more than forty restaurants around the world, including three Michelin-starred addresses in New York. He is also the author of Simple Cuisine and several other cookbooks.
His cooking combines French technique with Asian and global spices. In New York, his restaurants range from his flagship at 1 Central Park West to ABC Kitchen, the plant-based ABCV, and the Tin Building at the South Street Seaport.
Born in Strasbourg, Alsace, Vongerichten grew up watching his mother and grandmother cook daily lunches for about fifty employees at the family’s coal business.
At sixteen, a birthday dinner at the three-star Auberge de l’Ill set his course; soon after, he began an apprenticeship there under Paul Haeberlin.
He later worked with Paul Bocuse and Louis Outhier at L’Oasis in southern France, and helped Outhier open restaurants between 1980 and 1985 at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, Le Méridien in Singapore, and the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong.
That partnership brought Vongerichten to the United States in the mid-1980s to open Le Marquis de Lafayette in Boston. Within a year, he moved to New York as executive chef of Lafayette at the Drake Swissôtel, earning a four-star New York Times review at twenty-nine. In 1991, he opened JoJo with Bob Giraldi and Phil Suarez; the bistro earned three Times stars and remains open.
Vongerichten lives in New York City with his wife, Marja, and their daughter.
Dining and Cooking