Chef Thomas Keller is passionate about bistro cooking and believes fervently that the real art of cooking lies in elevating to excellence the simplest ingredients; that bistro cooking embodies, at once, a culinary ethos of generosity, economy and simplicity. So enamored is he of this older, more casual type of cooking that he opened the restaurant Bouchon right next door to The French Laundry. Now Bouchon, the cookbook, embodies this cuisine in all its sublime simplicity.