Dear Thomas Keller,

I just submitted my resume and a cover letter to the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group in hopes that it will lead to a paid externship.  Thomas Keller.  As in French Laundry, Ad Hoc, Per Se, Bouchon.  If this doesn't impress you, you probably have no idea who he is.  Google now.


I hate writing cover letters.  I've never quite mastered the modern, formal, business style of writing.  I feel like I either come across as painfully proper and antiquated or way too casual.  Usually in these cases I write a letter that has every wrong and inappropriate thing imaginable in it, just so I can get it out of my system.  Then I move on.  So here's the letter I didn't send:

Dear Chef Keller,

Please hire me.  I know you have absolutely no cause to, and could not pick me out of a police line up if you had to (which hopefully you never will), but I still feel I am deserving of a chance to prove myself in one of your kitchens. Let me list my many fine qualities: in 9 months of study I have never once set anyone else on fire, destroyed any cookware, or lost any of my phalanges.   In addition to this strict safety code I adhere to, I am well versed in actual baking and patisserie.  For breads I can mix, proof, rest, and roll out with the best of them.  Cake and quick bread mixing methods?  I’ve mastered seven at last count.  Cookies?  Love them – especially for breakfast.  My latest obsession is tempering chocolates to make truffles and bon bons. 

Besides being a sugar junkie with a penchant for late nights and early mornings and all the hours in between, I am genuinely a fan of yours.  I was enchanted before I even had the chance to dine in one of your restaurants.  I fell in love during a brief fling at Bouchon in Las Vegas - sadly there was nary a fat Elvis in sight.  Now I want to bring it full circle and actually work in the kitchens.  

To quote Abba "take a chance on me!"  Not an Abba fan?  Well to paraphrase Leonard Cohen: If you want a baker, I'll do anything you ask me to.  Let me in, I'm your (wo)man.

Best Regards, etc, etc

Had I actually sent that letter, it wouldn't have been the first time in my life I've torpedoed myself.  It's tempting.  Getting to extern at someplace like French Laundry would be akin to being a PA on a Martin Scorsese film: you get to watch a master at work.  Obviously there are people who get to, but those people are never me and if I'm going to be rejected, I'd rather it be for who I really am versus a sterilized version of myself that a mid level human resources manager deems acceptably not hirable.  

But hope springs eternal and I sent a more "professional" cover letter.  And now the waiting for no response begins.