There is a moment in rescue diving when everything you have ever practiced becomes the only thing that matters. The current is indifferent. The body beneath the surface does not negotiate. You either know what to do before the emergency arrives, or you do not. Chef Raphaël Gamon learned this truth underwater, and he brought it back to every kitchen he has ever worked in. This is not a story about a dramatic transformation. It is a story about a single idea, held with great consistency across four decades: that preparation is the most profound form of care.
The first part of this editorial was written by Dr. Judith S. Stern for Vogue Paris. Dr. Judith S. Stern passed away on May 8, 2019, at the age of 76.
The Palais Royal and the First Education
In 1985, a young Swiss chef arrived in Paris with a culinary foundation and the particular seriousness that comes from training in a country that does not separate craft from rigor. What Paris offered was something else entirely: a standard of precision that had no tolerance for approximation.
The kitchens of the Palais Royal were not places where one learned patience by accident. They were environments in which discipline was the entry requirement, not the goal. The hierarchy was clear, the expectations absolute, and the hours long enough to separate the committed from the merely enthusiastic. Chef Raphaël emerged from those years with something that no single technique could teach: an understanding that excellence is not a result. It is a practice. A daily decision. A posture toward one’s work.
He would carry that posture into everything that followed. Into the kitchens of royalty and heads of state. Into the founding of the world’s first TCM-French fusion restaurant in Singapore. Into his training at Eu Yan Sang, Asia’s foremost institution for traditional medicinal plant knowledge. And eventually, into the ocean.
Certified to Rescue: The Philosophy Beneath the Water
In October 2007, Chef Raphaël completed his PADI Emergency First Response Instructor certification, qualifying him to teach life-saving protocols to others. The credential is demanding precisely because it asks its holders not simply to know how to respond, but to be capable of teaching that response under pressure.
Rescue diving operates on a principle that should be obvious and yet is rarely practiced in ordinary life: you do not wait for a crisis to learn what to do about it. The diver who hesitates at the critical moment has not failed. The failure happened long before, in the weeks and months when the skills were not practiced, when the signals were not studied, when preparedness was treated as optional.
This is not a metaphor Chef Raphaël applies loosely. He means it in the most literal sense. The body, like the ocean, sends signals. Water temperature changes before conditions deteriorate. A diver’s buoyancy shifts before the situation becomes urgent. And the human body, long before a condition establishes itself in a way that demands medical intervention, speaks. It speaks through energy levels, digestion, skin, sleep, and mood. Medicinal food wisdom, whether drawn from the millennia-old pharmacopeia of Eastern traditions or the dietary medicine of the Mediterranean basin, teaches us to read that language before we need a rescue.
Medicinal Cooking Classes in Los Angeles: The Rescue That Prevents
In Chef Raphaël’s own words:
Today, I stand at the front of my medicinal cooking classes in Los Angeles and hand certificates to students who have learned something that does not appear on most menus and is rarely taught in culinary school. They have learned that food is not fuel. It is information. It is a daily instruction to the body about what it is expected to do, how to repair itself, how to defend itself, and how to thrive.
My approach draws from TCM cooking principles, a little Ayurvedic tradition, Mediterranean food culture, and the growing body of modern nutritional research confirming what global food traditions have long held to be true: what we eat, prepared with intention and selected with knowledge, is one of the most powerful variables in our long-term well-being. The students who complete my TCM cooking certification leave not with a collection of recipes but with a framework. A way of listening. A practice of preventative nutrition built into the most ordinary act of daily life.
My book, “Cooking with Traditional Medicine,” extends this mission beyond the classroom. It is not a cookbook. It is a personalized health journal and self-help tool, with green-highlighted sections throughout that invite each reader to document their own health conditions, goals, and responses. By the time a reader reaches the later pages, they have not simply absorbed information. They have built a protocol. A personal language between themselves and their body.
I have spent my life studying what it means to prepare. At the Palais Royal, preparation meant mastery of craft. In the water, it meant the capacity to save a life. In the kitchen today, it means something quieter and perhaps more powerful: teaching people to act before illness has the chance to establish itself. Listen to your body!
That, I will tell you, is the real rescue.
Ready to begin? My medicinal cooking classes in Los Angeles are open to individuals and groups of all experience levels. Visit tcmchef.com to reserve your place, explore “Cooking with Traditional Medicine,” and start the most important kitchen education of your life.