Great restaurants don’t just serve food—they tell a story about the place they belong to. No one understands this better than Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
Over the past three decades, the Alsace-born chef has built an empire of restaurants, each shaped by the rhythms of its neighborhood. “You have to be in touch with your zip code,” he tells CULTURED. This philosophy keeps his menus in constant evolution, from the market-driven plates of ABC Kitchen to the late-night indulgence of Chez Margaux, a new private members' club in the Meatpacking District. Whether reinventing farm-to-table dining or bringing back New York’s after-hours scene, Vongerichten isn’t just feeding people, but shaping the way they experience the city.
When CULTURED caught up with him, he was—predictably—on the move, fueled by a morning pastry tasting at the Tin Building and en route to another kitchen. Over the course of our conversation, he traced his journey from childhood meals in Alsace to the restaurants and hospitality projects that define his name today—and why, even after all these years, he’s still finding new ways to feed the world.
Where are you, and what's in your system?
Oh my God. I'm in New York. I woke up this morning and went to the Tin Building, had a coffee, and went up to the 7th floor where they held a pastry tasting. Believe it or not, I tried a cinnamon bun, a cardamom bun, some savory pastries like onion gruyère—it tastes like pizza gruyère, but for breakfast—a slice of citrus curd tart, a new tarte tatin that we’re doing, a passion fruit layer cake, a chocolate caramel brownie, the lemon bun cake, a chestnut cake, and a mandarin cheesecake... I had a bite of everything. Now I'm gonna have a sugar rush, so I may talk faster than usual.
Tell me about the food ecosystem you grew up in. I know that your mother and grandmother would cook for the employees of your father's coal business. What kind of eater were you?
Growing up in a house like that where you're cooking for 35 to 40 people every lunch, and 20 for dinner, feels like a mini restaurant at home. It was always big platters of food: a roast chicken with potatoes in the middle of the table, and everybody jumping in. I learned about being timely—in the restaurant business, you have to be; lunch was at 12:30, and if you showed up at 12:40, there was nothing left.
It was mostly a meat diet—sausages, sauerkraut, spaetzle, veal, beef. Game in the wintertime, like venison, pheasant. I was not a picky eater because when you have exactly three meals a day, you cannot miss anything. You have some dislikes, but you learn to like it when you're a kid.
Do remember what you disliked?
At the beginning, veal tongue or the innards were not always my favorite, but they became my favorite after. Like the day we had sweetbread or veal tongue with a raifort sauce. Alsace food is very Germanic in a way. There's a potato with every meal. I remember that in the winter, when there was nothing and all the harvest was done, the cellar was full of potatoes—like, tons of potatoes for the next four or five months until the next crop. There were two condiments: mustard [and] all different types of horseradish.
Your first restaurant job was as a teenager with Paul Haeberlin, and the next was working as a cook for the captain of a boat.
My father took over a [heating] business from his grandfather. We were a coal distributor in the little town where I was born, so I was always covered in soot and chalk from head to toe. I was supposed to continue what the family started, but I hated every second of it. So, they sent me to an engineering school when I was 15. They threw me out. I couldn't wait for them to tell my parents, “Your son has to get out of here. He’s the worst student we ever had.”
For my 16th birthday, my parents took me to a restaurant. We never went to restaurants, because there were too many people in our family. It was a revelation for me. My God, I didn't know you could make a career out of food. I think my parents saw that. When the chef came by the table, my father said to him: “My son is good for nothing. Do you need anybody to wash dishes?” And he said, “As a matter of fact, we're looking for an apprentice.” That was Haeberlin.
What are some things that you learned from those early experiences that inform to the way you run your restaurants or conceive dishes today?
For the first six months, I worked in pastries. It was very, very useful for me to start in pastry because it's an exact science. Today, all my recipes are to the gram. That's probably part of the success of our company. Everything is very precise, so we can pass on this vinaigrette, this sauce, this condiment, whatever we do. I learned that in the first six months of my career when I was 16.
At the time, serving in the army was mandatory. I needed to get rid of my army years, so I said to my chef, Paul Haeberlin, “What should I do? I wanna travel, I wanna see something.” I was very privileged—they made a couple of phone calls, and I ended up on a boat. For one year, I was traveling to Morocco, Portugal, England, and cooking for one captain and two officers. You learn how to drink, or to do nothing. You become a little lazy—I never shot a gun. I mean, you do some training, but it's really a waste of time.
You have dozens of restaurants around the world. How are you able to give each spot a precise DNA while making it feel like it's part of the same family?
You have to be in touch with your zip code. When we opened JoJo, my first restaurant, in '91 on the Upper East Side, there were a lot of people are living there, so it had to be a neighborhood place. The day you have a snowstorm, you want to really take care of the neighborhood. So that's where it usually starts, then everything follows. You have to be friendly enough or high-end if you're in a hotel. It all depends on the location. The last thing I always do is the money. JoJo is a little brownstone, and it looks like a double decker bus. It's very charming, small, and neighborly. Then you go to a place like Four Twenty Five, which is six blocks away on 56th and Park Avenue in the Norman Foster [office tower]. It’s a little more high-end, with more businesses around there. You adapt to that zip code. ABC Kitchen was born because we are a block from the Union Square Greenmarket, so it's all vegetable-driven.
One of your most recent projects is the Miami Tropic, your first luxury residential building. How did you channel the city and adapt to that setting?
[The developer] David Martin called me up, saying, “I want to bring the ABC Kitchen to Miami.” I said, “Mmm, sounds good, but I don’t need another restaurant. What's the building? A hotel?” He said, “No, it's residential. We're gonna do condos, and we’d love to have ABC and really pamper the guests.” I said, “You're gonna use the ABC name to get a bigger price per square foot, so I want to be part of the action.” I like to be part of something new. I said, "If you want, I can design the kitchens, I can help with the appliances. I would love to give people a choice to buy glassware, plateware, or stoneware from Japan."
I wanted to even go further. I want to create an app, because for me, it's all about pleasing people. You go to the app, and we can stock the fridge for you. You want a dozen eggs, you want some stone crab, you want some salmon, beef, whatever you like, cooked or uncooked, prepared already or not. When you need some wine, we can stock the wine. Not too crazy prices, we'll align ourselves with Whole Foods or different markets like it. That was the idea, to really go into lifestyle a little bit. Of course, we're gonna have the ABC Kitchen restaurant downstairs...
It’s really a sort of holistic treatment in a way.
Yeah! With a juice bar, a spa, a cafe. In the beginning, when I called, they told me, “No, no, we don't do that.” Then they called me six months after saying, “We have a deal for you.” I said, “OK, let's do this.” It’s not to sell a dream but just to give people options, because people are constantly asking me in the restaurant, “What's your favorite blender? What’s your knife set?” Here, we give an option to people to—if they want—have the best juicer, or just order juice from us and we send it up. People love to be taken care of.
You recently opened the members' club Chez Margaux in New York as well. What does the rise of the members' club signify in terms of what New Yorkers want from hospitality culture right now?
The pandemic was a setback for everyone on every level. Sometimes, I'd come back from a trip at 10:30 at night, and there would be no place to go to eat. I came to New York for the 24/7. When I was approached about Chez Margaux, my idea was that we need to keep serving people until 2 a.m. New York lost the late nights. Last Saturday night, we had like 30 people eating at 2 a.m. and we closed the place at 4. It's like a nightlife renaissance, and I love it. I think it fits the zip code as well.
You're such an iconic figure in the food world, Jean-Georges. If someone were to direct a biopic of your life, who would you want to play you?
I mean, it has to be an action guy. Not James Bond, but an action guy.
Daniel Craig?
I would love that. We probably are the same height, but he has a little more hair than me.
What else are you working on right now?
We're opening a real Alsace brasserie with my mom's recipes in Tribeca. She will come over for a week to help us, she's 92. I’m actually doing it with Robert De Niro. I feel like people are ready to eat this kind of food. People want the experience. They wanna eat the bone marrow, thy wanna eat the whole legs...
Is there any dish from your childhood that feels especially relevant to you today?
It's called Baeckeoffe. It's a clay pot with layers of potato, leeks, and onions. There's three kinds of meat—a little bit of pork, beef, and lamb. You marinate it in wine and herbs, cover the pot, and put it in the oven. It's served either with horseradish or mustard. It's absolutely divine, really homey.
It has the two condiments of your childhood, horseradish and mustard.
At the restaurant, we're gonna put those condiments on the table for people to have, and you know, it’ll be fun.
