No One Parties Like Jacques Pépin, Even at 90

New York Times

5 days ago

Jacques Pépin couldn't help himself: The buttercream frosting on his strawberry sheet cake looked too luscious. Slicing it for dozens of guests at his birthday party on Saturday, he stuck in his index finger, took a swipe and licked.
'Sorry,' he said, when his daughter, Claudine Pépin, caught him, and scolded with her eyes. (When she wasn't looking, he did it again.)
The guests gathered at Yellowframe Farm, a bucolic estate in Dutchess County, to salute Mr. Pépin, the celebrated French chef who has been a mainstay of American cooking for more than half a century, didn't mind his taste test. It wasn't even his only birthday cake. By the end of the night, there were two rounds of 'Happy Birthday' — and one 'Bon Anniversaire' — and many glasses raised in his honor. Another elaborate fête followed the very next evening.
Mr. Pépin is turning 90 this year, on Dec. 18, and to mark the milestone the Jacques Pépin Foundation has helped orchestrate 90 birthday parties, all around the country, at temples of gastronomy like the French Laundry, Restaurant Daniel and Gabriel Kreuther, but also at the local Irish pub near his home in Madison, Conn.
The enthusiasm surprised Mr. Pépin, who was never big on birthdays. On the eve of a to-do in Washington, D.C., for his 80th, he had a minor stroke. He recovered quickly, and even tried to attend (his family nixed that idea). Now, at his age, 'certainly I am celebrating a lot more than I ever did,' he said.
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