I'm Rolly Wesen, and I'm the proud
husband of Claudine Pépin, and we've been
married for 13 years. Of course I was
hugely intimidated by the idea that here
I'm dating Jacques Pépin's daughter -
Jacques Pépin's only daughter - and you
know, just barely cutting my
own chops as an executive chef, I mean, I
was I was not very good, actually
probably, truth be told. Good enough to hold
a job, but by comparison not not even
in the same league. I wasn't I wasn't
even on the farm team and he was a
star, so... But I think part of my
experience had to do with how great that
discrepancy was. I never felt competitive
in any way whatsoever because of course
there was no way I was going to be able
to ever compete with Jacques. Jacques is
absolutely extraordinary and because of
who he is and his immense energy and his
incredible generosity and his capacity
for teaching and the time at which he
came into the American culinary scene,
no one will ever be like him again. No one
will ever have the force that he had on
the world of culinary arts that he had.
And so for that reason, there was no
competition I was never going to be that
good - not even close. I wasn't even going to -
If I could get him to maybe like my food
a little bit, then that would be - that
would be an accomplishment. And that's
really all I could hope for.
But really I wanted to be a good husband
more than I wanted to be a great
chef in Jacques' eyes, and and hopefully
I think I've achieved that.
