Solitary Man: Thomas Keller and the Road to Creating The French Laundry

One sun-drenched Los Angeles morning in 1993, a lanky man just a few years shy of 40 stood at the end of an aisle in a Gelson’s supermarket, offering samples of an olive oil he’d developed to anybody who’d grant him an audience.

The oil, branded EVO, was a tough sell:  Even after he’d explain its attributes—pressed from three different olive varieties (all Californian, no less!), and presented in an opaque bottle to...