Jacques Pépin

French chef, author, culinary educator, television personality, and artist, honoured with 24 James Beard Foundation Awards, five honorary doctoral degrees, the American Public Television lifetime achievement award, the Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019 and the Légion d'honneur, France's highest order of merit, in 2004.

After having been the personal chef of French President Charles de Gaulle, he moved to the US in 1959 and after working in New York's top French restaurants, refused the same job with President John F. Kennedy in the White House and instead took a culinary development job with Howard Johnson's, an American hotel brand. During his career, he has served in numerous prestigious restaurants, first, in Paris, and then in America. He has appeared on American television and has written for The New York Times, Food & Wine and other publications. He has authored more than 30 cookbooks, some of which have become best sellers. Pépin was a longtime friend of the American chef Julia Child, and their 1999 PBS series Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home won a Daytime Emmy Award. He also holds a BA and a MA from Columbia University in French literature.

In 1974, Pépin was badly injured while driving on a country road after a deer leapt in front of his car. Despite swerving to avoid it, his car hit the deer, veered off the road and struck a telephone pole before crashing into a ravine, landing upside-down and setting on fire. He fractured 14 bones in his back, pelvis, and arms. His left arm was so badly injured that physicians initially wanted to amputate it. Pépin recovered, but his left shoulder remained limited in mobility and his left arm is several inches shorter than his right. The accident caused him to realize that he would not be able to continue working full-time as a chef/restaurateur; this realization motivated his reinvention as a teacher and author.