Thomas Keller

Thomas Keller (born October 14, 1955) is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook writer. He and his landmark Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry in Yountville, California, have won multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation, notably the Best California Chef in 1996, and the Best Chef in America in 1997. The restaurant is a perennial winner in the annual Restaurant Magazine list of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World.

In 2005, he was awarded the three star rating in the inaugural Michelin Guide for New York for his restaurant Per Se, and in 2006, he was awarded three stars in the inaugural Michelin Guide to the Bay Area for The French Laundry. He is the only American chef to have been awarded simultaneous three star Michelin ratings for two different restaurants. He currently holds 7 Michelin stars total: 3 at Per Se, 3 at The French Laundry, and 1 at Bouchon.

Early life and career

Keller's mother was a restaurateur who employed Thomas as help when her cook got sick. Four years after his parents divorced, the family moved east and settled in Palm Beach, Florida. In his teenage summers, he worked at the Palm Beach Yacht Club starting as a dishwasher and quickly moving up to cook. It was here he discovered his passion for cooking and perfection in a hollandaise sauce.

Thomas Keller (disambiguation)

Thomas Keller (born 1955) is an American chef.

Thomas Keller is also the name of:

Thomas Keller (card game player)

Thomas Keller (born October 14, 1980 in Ann Arbor, Michigan) is an American professional poker player, residing in Scottsdale, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada. He is the brother of Shawn "Lightning" Keller.

Keller graduated from Stanford University with a degree in economics in 2002. It was at Stanford where he began playing poker, having been influenced by the movie Rounders. Like David Williams and Noah Boeken, Keller credits his experience of playing Magic: The Gathering as a helpful factor in his poker career.

In Phoenix, his jump from playing low limits to the biggest high-stakes games happened quickly. One local story is that Keller won so many $100 chips at Casino Arizona that the casino ran out, forcing high limit players to buy chips from him, which he sold from the trunk of his car. Keller has said the story is absurd, but the fact it persists attests to how well Keller did in high limit games during the era.

In December 2003, Keller won the $281,525 first prize in the $2,500 no limit hold'em event of the Five Diamond World Poker Classic, defeating Allen Cunningham in the final heads-up confrontation.

Thomas Keller (rowing)

Thomas Keller also known as Thomi Keller (24 December 1924 – 28 September 1989) was the president of Féderation Internationale des Sociétés d'Aviron (FISA), the governing body of international rowing, from 1958 until his death in 1989, and president of the General Association of International Sports Federations from 1969 to 1987. He was also a qualified chemical engineer and president of Swiss Timing, a company specialising in sports chronometry which is now part of the Swatch group.

As a student, Keller was a member of the Swiss university teams for Nordic combined skiing and for ski-jumping. However, in rowing, he was not only a champion sculler at Swiss national level, but won the bronze medal in single sculls at the 1950 European Rowing Championships.

Keller was chosen to row at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, but did not do so as his national Olympic Committee chose to boycott the games in protest at the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary (see 1956 Hungarian Revolution). Two years later, he became president of FISA, following the death of the previous president, Gaston Mullegg. At 34, he was one of the youngest presidents of an international sports federation ever to be elected. Keller always aimed to give priority to athletes' interests, and consistently aimed to minimize the influence of politics on sport.