Sally Schmitt
February 28, 1932 - March 5th, 2022
Over fifty years ago, before Chez Panisse, before California Cuisine, before Farm to Table, there was Sally Schmitt. San Francisco Chronicle Food Editor, Michael Bauer, has called Sally a legend and hailed her as “one of the great unsung heroes of California Cuisine,” calling her “as much a pioneer as Alice Waters.” Joyce Goldstein, in her book, Inside the California Food Revolution, wrote that Sally “opened one of the first restaurants to offer what would become identified as California Cuisine,” and that Sally “was a locavore before the term was even coined.” Julia Child, Richard Olney, Marion Cunningham, and yes, Alice Waters, all dined at Sally’s restaurant, The French Laundry. When noted chef, Cindy Pawlcyn, first started out, she tore a photo of Sally out of a magazine and carried it around with her in her wallet for fifteen years until it wore out. And when Thomas Keller, who bought The French Laundry from Sally and her husband, Don, published his landmark The French Laundry Cookbook, he gave them the very first copy off the press, and had as the last recipe in the book, “Sally Schmitt’s Cranberry and Apple Kuchen with hot Cream Sauce,” along with a glowing tribute to them.
Sally Schmitt learned to cook early. Raised on a small, Northern California farm, she mastered with her mother while young how to churn butter, can vegetables, and make jam. This was followed by a degree in Home Economics from UC Davis, and then years of practice.
“When I set out to become a chef, Sally Schmitt was my hero. Later when I opened my first restaurant, she was my mentor.”
– Cindy Pawlcyn, Chef & Proprietor, Mustards Grill
In 1967, she moved with her husband, Don, and their five children to Yountville in the Napa Valley to manage a large shopping arcade. Her restaurant career began when she took over the hamburger-and-sandwich cafe in the complex. Four years later, she opened the full-on restaurant, The Chutney Kitchen, that had lines out the door at lunch time and once-a-month, reservations-only dinners that soon expanded to twice a month.
Eight years later, after renovating a run-down, old stone building, a former saloon converted to a laundry and then boarding house, she and Don opened their restaurant, The French Laundry, where they could serve dinner on a nightly basis. Her cooking was called “brilliant” by Jeremiah Tower and soon drew applauds from Gourmet magazine and the major newspapers. With Sally cooking, and Don greeting guests and pouring wine, the restaurant stayed booked months in advance for the next sixteen years.
“We can all learn from Sally and her approach to food, to say nothing of her approach to life.”
– Thomas Keller, Chef & Proprietor, The French Laundry
In 1994, Don and Sally sold their restaurant to the young chef, Thomas Keller, to “retire” to The Apple Farm, a 30-acre farm they had purchased in Sonoma’s Anderson Valley a decade before. Retirement turned into running a series of classes at the farm for fifteen years, and teaching at the Napa Valley College Culinary Arts Program, Tante Marie’s Cooking School in San Francisco, the Napa Valley Cooking Classes, Yountville’s “A Class Act,” and the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.
Then came real retirement when Don and Sally retreated to their little cottage in Elk where she learned to cook for two again. Her husband happily ate everything and smiled through all her experimenting with new ideas. One of the ideas was to write this book for her family, her students, and those who through the years came to love the cooking that came out of her kitchens.
On March 5th, 2022, just five days after her 90th birthday, Sally Schmitt passed away at home. She spent the last years of her life happily surrounded by family, and working on her memoir/cookbook, Six California Kitchens, published by Chronicle Books in April of 2022. In it she wrote:
“All in all, I really have done just what I loved to do, which has always been simply to cook good food for those I cared for. That’s what mattered. That’s all that mattered.”
– Sally Schmitt
Sally is the subject of Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot's short documentary, "The Best Chef in The World," released by the New York Times in late 2022. Watch the entire film at the above link.
Winner of the 2023 Golden Poppy Award for best cookbook and the IACP Award in the American Category! Purchase at Indiebound / Bookshop.org / Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Indigo(Canada) / International