Six California Kitchens

Sally Schmitt is the great unsung hero of California cuisine, a pioneer of the farm-to-table movement, and founder of the French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley. SIX CALIFORNIA KITCHENS is her magnum opus: a narrative cookbook that weaves her remarkable story with 115 recipes that distill the ethos of Northern California cooking into simple, delicious dishes, plus evocative imagery, historic ephemera, and cooking wisdom. In this soon-to-be-classic, Sally takes us through the 6 kitchens where she learned to cook, honed her skills, and spent her working life via quintessential recipes like Potato Salad, Braised Pork with Cider & Apples, and Rum Cream Pie. With gorgeous food and sense-of-place photography, this is a masterful, story-rich cookbook for home and aspiring chefs who cook locally and seasonally, food historians, fans of wine country, and anyone who wants to bring the spirit of Northern California home with them.

“"Schmitt, the founder of California's famed French Laundry restaurant, reflects on the food that defined her life, in this sumptuous collection of recipes and tales from the kitchens that inspired them. [...] Fans of Alice Waters won't want to miss this delectable page-turner."- Publishers Weekly , starred review”

"A cookbook-memoir that's humble, proud, and filled with family {...} Along with her recipes (more than 100), Schmitt shares knowledge of ingredients and culinary wisdom that forswears fancy equipment and techniques to zero in on flavor and taste. Personal photographs grace her lessons {...} Dishes themselves, reflective of Schmitt's personality, are approachable, unintimidating, and respectful of flavors {...} An inspiration up to her closing lines."--Booklist, starred review
"The book, illustrated with photographs and memorabilia, is filled with often inventive but always ingredient-driven dishes [...] Some are written with step-by-step directions -- two pages for a turkey sandwich! -- that convey a sense that Ms. Schmitt is at your side offering handy tips. Her French Laundry recipes are pulled from daily five-course menus: warm salad of sweetbreads and mushrooms; roasted rib-eye of veal; and rhubarb mousse, nothing precious."?The New York Times
"This cookbook is like having a grandmother teach you how to cook. But this isn't about grandma's green beans and pot roast -- Schmitt had an expansive palate, a sesame seed toaster and a suribachi (grinding bowl) from Japan and adored salmon with sorrel sauce. [...] It's the kind of cookbook you will want to sit and read through, taking in maybe a couple kitchens a day and marking the recipes as you go along [...] It becomes quite apparent why she had legions of fans of her cooking. You're about to become one more of the them."--San Francisco Examiner

"Schmitt, the founder of California's famed French Laundry restaurant, reflects on the food that defined her life, in this sumptuous collection of recipes and tales from the kitchens that inspired them. [...] Fans of Alice Waters won't want to miss this delectable page-turner."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Schmitt's memoir and cookbook [...] was 10 years in the making. Sadly, she did not live to see the fruits of this particular labor: Schmitt died on March 5, just five days after her 90th birthday and a month before the book's publication. But her forthright, unpretentious presence is very much alive in this beautiful volume filled with food, family, reminiscences, recipes and no-nonsense cooking tips."--The Wall Street Journal

"Schmitt, cofounder of the original French Laundry and a pioneer of California cooking, penned this exquisite debut cookbook in her 90th year (she died in March). It is a book of rigor and delight, filled with stories, photos, and recipes drawn from every place she has cooked." --Library Journal, Best Cookbooks of 2022

Sally Schmitt is the founder of the French Laundry and one of California's most influential food pioneers. She was born and raised in Northern California and started cooking professionally in 1967. After 11 years spent in Yountville running a cafe and a restaurant, she opened the French Laundry with her husband, Don. She designed her menus around local, seasonal ingredients - a novel concept at the time. This style of "locavore" cooking caught the attention of critics and inspired other local chefs, helping propagate the farm-to-table movement. After selling the restaurant in 1994, Sally taught cooking classes in a renovated farmhouse on an apple farm in Mendocino. Nowadays, she lives on the Mendocino coast.

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