Superdownsize me: 'Best chef' to open burger bar

What does a top-flight chef dream of doing after his restaurants have repeatedly been named the best in the world? If he's Thomas Keller, the genius behind The French Laundry in the Napa Valley, California, and its Manhattan outpost, Per Se, then he dreams about the utterly unexpected - opening up a burger shack.

Mr Keller's claim to fame may be dishes of extraordinary intricacy and theatrical presentation, dishes prepared with foie gras and black truffles or oysters and caviar, but he has also demonstrated a constant hankering to recreate the American culinary standards of his youth.

Next month, he is embarking on a typically unorthodox experiment down the street from The French Laundry - a restaurant he intends to keep open for just six months, where the menu will change daily and the emphasis will be on ruggedly unpretentious comfort food such as fried chicken and beef stroganoff.

After that, he is thinking of using the space to go more downmarket still. The burger shack idea is not yet set in stone - he might open a steakhouse or a sushi bar instead - but the burger bar seems to be the one that holds the most visceral appeal.

"It's something I've always wanted to do," Keller told the Los Angeles Times. "It'll be my version of In-N-Out [a popular West Coast burger chain]. I'm an American; I grew up eating hamburgers just like everybody else. As I grew older, I didn't stop eating hamburgers, I just started searching for a better hamburger."

Kristine Keefer, a press liaison officer who has worked with Keller for years, confirmed his passion. "His first love when he's not cooking or he's out on the road is fast food."

At first blush, the idea seems as preposterous as putting the fabled French chef Paul Bocuse in an advert for McDonald's. (That really happened in France a dozen years ago, prompting Bocuse to sue and denounce McDonald's for "tasteless, boneless food in which everything is soft".)

Anyone familiar with Keller's menu, though, knows the association with his childhood food experiences runs deep.

Dinner guests at The French Laundry are more often than not greeted with a glorified ice-cream cone inspired by the downmarket chain Baskin & Robbins. (It is filled not with ice-cream but with salmon tartare and sweet red onion crème fraiche.)

His menus include virtuoso riffs on the simplest of concepts, from bacon and egg (tete de cochon and a poached quail's egg, served on a silver spoon instead of a plate), to macaroni and cheese and a digestive mignardise he calls peanut butter and jelly (peanut-flavoured chocolate truffles and French-style jellied fruits).

Keller got his start as a cook making steak and breakfast at the Palm Beach Yacht Club in Florida, where his mother was the manager. Rather than consider such short-order work beneath him, he became fascinated by the details, spending two years entranced by the intricacies of hollandaise sauce (for the eggs benedict) and seeking to understand its every last mystery.

Chances are, a Thomas Keller burger shack is going to be an experience to remember, however modest the premise. Already, he's thinking of offering a wine list rather than a soda fountain. The shack's working title: Burgers and Bottles.