Eric Johnson
Executive Chef, Jean-Georges Shanghai
Shanghai, China
Montpelier 12/93

It's pretty tough to open a restaurant. It's tougher if you and your staff don't speak the same language. And if your boss is the famously perfectionist Jean-Georges Vongerichten, you are charged with opening his first restaurant in his native France, and you're an American chef taking on the Parisian food critics, you might have a little trouble remaining calm.

It's fortunate that Eric Johnson (Montpelier 12/93) is a pretty calm guy. " I remember the first day, " he says, "I couldn't think of how to say 'make it rare,' so I kept poking the meat as it went out, hoping the cooks knew what they were doing."

Johnson didn't have to speak French to make Market, Jean-Georges Vongerichten's first Parisian restaurant, a smashing success, so his next assignment, opening Jean-Georges Shanghai in China, shouldn't be too difficult. No, Johnson doesn't speak Chinese.

Born in Stony Brook, Long Island, Johnson had a traditional college career at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "I knew I had to choose between graduate school and culinary school,'' he says. "I chose NECI and I've never regretted it."

Johnson's chef-instructors encouraged him to aim for the top of the culinary world, sending him to Daniel in New York City for his second internship, an internship that turned into a first job. The experience at Daniel was eye-opening for the young chef. "I was kind of cocky when I got there because I did well at school and Chef Michel LeBorgne told me I had talent. Then I went to Daniel and they murdered me. But I think it is worth sucking it up and being murdered until you learn how to do it right. "

Johnson followed two of his Daniel co-workers to Jean-Georges, where he started at the fish station, then rose to saucier and sous chef, but he grew restless. He had always wanted to travel to Asia and was starting to feel that it was now or never. "I went to Jean-Georges and told him I was going. He said, 'no, I think you should go to Paris for me instead.'

Although he was the toast of Paris, Johnson was still drawn to Asia. Vongerichten's Shanghai restaurant had been in the works for a while. Last fall the word came that the project was moving forward and Johnson was on a plane to Shanghai, where Jean-Georges Shanghai will be part of multi-million dollar redevelopment of several 1930s' style buildings along a riverside promenade in the heart of the city that was once the "portal to the East."

He is just a tiny bit worried about the language problem this time. "In Paris, I once told a cook to make love to the oven. I meant turn it down, but I could right away from her face that I'd said something wrong. Mandarin is even trickier that way, if you put the accent in the wrong place it can mean something completely different. There's a lot that can go wrong there."