Few chefs rack up air miles like Jean-Georges Vongerichten. With more than 60 restaurants worldwide, the Alsatian-born chef moves between New York, Paris, Morocco and London almost constantly, and there's a new opening coming in Kuala Lumpur. When Elite Traveler caught up with him at Jean-Georges at The Connaught in London — where he'd just reworked the menu around career highlights and fresh dishes — he shared the travels that shaped him.
His worldview shifted in 1989, when he took a job cooking French food at Bangkok's Oriental Hotel (now the Mandarin Oriental). It was a stack of firsts: his first flight, his first business-class seat, a fifteen-hour journey, and his first time running a kitchen inside a luxury hotel. Growing up on the French-German border, the farthest he'd been was the south of France or Brittany, so Bangkok was a genuine jolt.
Cooking itself came from home. His mother — now 94 — and his grandmother cooked daily for 40 to 45 people in a multigenerational household that functioned like a restaurant. He started in the kitchen at 16 and never really left it.
If he could relive one trip, it would be Kyoto. He praises the people and the culture, and specifically the vegetables: carrots unlike anything you've tasted, grown through the city's 72 micro-seasons, so something is always in the ground. That's a useful nudge for anyone who thinks Japan's food story is only about sushi and kaiseki rooms — the markets alone justify a visit.
His travel habit is easy to steal: whenever he checks into a hotel, he unpacks and heads straight to the local market. It settles him instantly, and it's where he finds the oddities — in Japan, a fermented black pepper with floral notes that he calls spectacular. Travel, in his view, is about discovering something new, and food is the shortcut.
His most recent trip was Las Vegas for a chefs' event at the Aria, with around 40 chefs, poolside food stalls and appearances by Shaquille O'Neal and Sammy Hagar. He returns every few months — he doesn't gamble — because the city reinvents itself constantly, with roughly ten new restaurants opening between visits. A standout this time: Gymkhana, which he ranks as the best Indian food he's had. For a city he calls culturally imported, that's telling — Vegas now pulls in the food world's big names rather than the reverse.
Asked about a final trip, he lands on Myanmar. He remembers the temples, the spiritual calm, streets where he saw barely two cars, and a tea leaf salad with ginger that stuck with him. His verdict is a neat summary of how he travels: discovery has to come with food.
For travellers, the takeaway is simple. Build your trip around markets, not just restaurants; the chef with 60 restaurants does exactly that. And if Kyoto or Myanmar were good enough to top his list, they're worth a look at yours.
