A chef the whole world knows I.

For a man so meticulous he famously transports his fish packed in the same direction as the river current flowed and peels his fava beans before blanching, Chef Keller seems very relaxed. Sitting upstairs at Ladurée, the lavish macaroon palace within Harrods, he is here to discuss his new pop-up restaurant in the Knightsbridge department store. Having consistently dazzled at Per Se, The French Laundry and Ad Hoc and devised the dish that won over Anton Ego in Ratatouille, Keller really can do no wrong. Here he talks to GQ.com about his favourite burger, the best “man-apé” and why you can't be a picky eater at 30,000 feet…

GQ.com: Does it feel like a pilgrimage opening a restaurant in London and have you had you had to adapt the menu for British tastes?
Thomas Keller: It's more than a pilgrimage – it's an extraordinary event. I have to give credit to Harrods for making the effort to reach out and start the process – we're 4000 miles away from each other. As for the menu, it is continually modified. The big challenge for us is the ingredients. As much as we're trying to bring some of our ingredients to the UK – and we've been successful with that – we don't have a complete list of everything we're going to use yet. My colleagues here in London have been very helpful. I wrote them all a letter asking them to recommend the suppliers they are using to help us understand where they are coming from and in turn the quality of the ingredients we want. So we found out all the fishermen, the farmers, the foragers, the gardeners here in the UK. I even got an e-mail this morning from Heston saying, “Thomas, I looked at the list and, you know, the duck producer that I recommended does really good breasts but the legs aren't that great, so let's look into that.” It's that level of detail. I really appreciate that they're looking after us.

Which British chef do you wish would open in New York?
I couldn't limit it to one! I would love to have my colleagues close by. Marcus Wareing, Michel Roux Jr… Heston's a good friend. Jason Atherton is a wonderful person and Tom Aikens has become very close over a number of years. We seem to be moving around en masse – and why not? There's always this criticism of chefs opening too many restaurants. If you open them up too fast, there's an issue there, but if you plan and do it correctly, with the right resources, you can do it well. I don't think there's anything wrong with Alain Ducasse, Joël Robuchon or Daniel Boulud opening multiple restaurants. If you think about it, it's about having someone [permanently] in that restaurant that has enough talent. It's about their team and these great young chef de cuisines. Look at Dean Yasharian across the street [in Bar Boulud at the Mandarin Oriental] – Daniel just made it happen! What does everyone still get wrong about roast chicken?

What does everyone still get wrong about roast chicken?
That's a good question. Probably the one thing I see that happens with roast chicken more often than not is that we don't dry out our birds well enough. It's hard to do at home – it's almost impossible for the home cook to have an environment inside the refrigerator where air is circulating so that the skin dries. You see in professional kitchens or butchers shops where the skin becomes a little dark – it's that dryness you need. Then comes the tempering part: when the chicken becomes room temperature, you roast it from there. Then you're really going to get a crispy skin and you're more likely to get even cooking. It's very difficult to get the breast done at the same time as the legs – you have to have that tolerance to say, “The great thing about roasted chicken is the whole thing.” If the breast is a little bit overcooked to the legs, you have to be OK with that.

Source: gq.com