The French Laundry’s Most Pivotal Moment: The Second Night

Imagine you open a restaurant and on the first night everything goes wrong. I don’t mean to say, it’s a bad first night. I mean to say it’s the worst possible first night. 

What if I told you that on the second night, you’d achieve national acclaim that would power your success to the top of the restaurant world for more than 28-years.

This is a true story. 

The French Laundry is a three Michillin Star restaurant in Napa, CA that has retained its place in the conversation for one of best restaurants in the world. Its founder, Thomas Keller, specifically references the staff’s ability to iterate between the first and second night as their continued key to success. They have redone the menu everyday since as a cultural mechanism to improve each day upon the previous days’ performance. 

Of course, the second day in business is when Esquire Magazine’s top food writer dined at The French Laundry and later named it one of America’s ten best new restaurants. (Thank goodness he didn’t dine on the first night, right?)

I’m searching for an example from any part of life that doesn’t offer a chance to come back and do things better. Thomas Keller has reaped many rewards (literally) from his willingness to improve on his past performances, so I’d imagine you and I might, too. 

If you have a rough first go at anything, wouldn’t we be so lucky to be perfectly in line for the type of success associated with The French Laundry!