“People ask us all the time how in the world we found ourselves, a mother-daughter duo from Arizona, living and working in the heart of Burgundy,” writes Marjorie Taylor. “It didn’t start with a road map or a fancy bank account, but really, with two things: French food and French culture.”
Marjorie, a pastry chef and cook who had run her own French-inflected restaurant and cooking school in Phoenix, passed on her Francophilia to her daughter, Kendall Smith Franchini, who, after majoring in French in college, studied viticulture in Burgundy and worked for wine importer Kermit Lynch. Kendall led the complex way to the two of them opening The Cook’s Atelier, their cooking school and shop, in the walled Burgundian town of Beaune.
We’ve been avidly following their journey since 2015: see A Year in Burgundy about the school, and Christmas in Burgundy, a look at Kendall’s family home: she’s now married to Laurent Franchini, who grew up in the South of France and runs The Cook’s Atelier kitchen boutique and wine shop, and they have three children. Kendall and Marjorie have just come out with their second cookbook, French at Heart, a compendium of, in Kendall’s words “reachable and not-too-pretentious recipes” (scroll to the end for their lovely take on radishes with butter). Kitchen secrets also included—and many ways to create joie-de-vivre. We just spotlighted Kendall and Laurent’s idyllic garden–see American Expats Grow Their Dreams in Burgundy—and today, we’re visiting The Cook’s Atelier school and Kendall and Laurent’s home kitchen.
Photography by Anson Smart from French at Heart: Recipes that Bring France Home by Marjorie Taylor and Kendall Smith Franchini with Jess Thomson. The book is newly out from Abrams.
Marjorie raised Kendall, her only child, as a single mother in Phoenix. “I didn’t set out thinking I would ever end up living in France,” she writes. “Kendall’s love for French culture altered the course of her life, and eventually mine.” After a successful culinary career in Arizona, Marjorie began her French journey by convincing Anne Willan to allow her to intern at her cooking school La Varenne.
