Philip Tessier is an award-winning chef, author, coach, culinary partner and innovator. He was the first American chef to ever place on the podium at the biennial Bocuse d’Or competition in Lyon, France, and most recently coached the 2017 U.S. team to victory. He recounts this journey in his book Chasing Bocuse, which launches October 2017.
Tessier began his training in the kitchen at a young age while growing up in Williamsburg, Virginia. He was interested and motivated to learn new techniques and taste new things, so his curiosity often led him to the library searching for cookbooks with exotic recipes.
He attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY and after graduation, to sought out the best kitchens of France, New York and California to hone his craft. Over the course of three decades, Tessier worked at some of the world’s most renowned restaurants including Roger Verge’s Le Moulin de Mougins, Eric Ripert’s Le Bernadin, as well as Thomas Keller’s Per Se, Bouchon and The French Laundry. It was at The French Laundry that Tessier began to train for the pinnacle of culinary achievement, the Olympics of the food world: the Bocuse d’Or.
Training for such an acclaimed event was no simple task. It required countless hours of developing, testing and fine-tuning recipes, not to mention coordinating the most minute details right down to the design of spoons and service ware. But Tessier’s hard work paid off when, in 2015, he won the Bocuse d’Or Silver Medal, becoming the first American to mount the podium. Two years later, Tessier coached team USA led by Chef Mathew Peters to take gold, giving his book Chasing Bocuse a fairytale ending.
Tessier embarked on his journey with the Bocuse d’Or to elevate American culinary excellence on the global stage. Today he continues this endeavor in the home kitchen with Hestan Cue. As co-founder and culinary director of Hestan Smart Cooking, he adds culinary expertise to a talented team of engineers and scientists to develop a new platform for cooking in the home.
He is also a culinary partner with Simple Feast, the app delivering recipes from the world’s greatest chefs and food minds, and Snake River Farms, which provides American wagyu (kobe) and prime beef to the country’s finest restaurants.
Tessier’s philanthropic partnerships include the Ment’or Foundation and No Kid Hungry, two organizations for which he serves as an ambassador promoting professional mentorship and culinary excellence, and an end to child hunger, respectively.
