Ripert next worked at Jamin under Joël Robuchon and was soon promoted to Assistant Chef de Partie.

In 1989, Ripert moved to the United States and was hired as a sous chef in the Watergate Hotel's Jean Louis Palladin restaurant in Washington, D.C. Ripert moved to New York in 1991, working briefly as David Bouley's sous-chef before Maguy and Gilbert Le Coze recruited him as a chef for Le Bernardin.

In September 2009, Avec Eric, Ripert's first TV show, debuted on PBS stations and ran for two seasons, earning two Daytime Emmy Awards: Outstanding Culinary Program (2011) and Outstanding Achievement in Main Title and Graphic Design (2010).

In 2010, he played himself in the television show Treme on HBO (season 1 episode 5), alongside David Chang, Wylie Dufresne and Tom Colicchio.

In the fall of 2008, Ripert published On the Line, his second cookbook with Artisan, which in 2002 published A Return to Cooking, a collaboration between Ripert, photographers Shimon and Tammar Rothstein, artist Valentino Cortazar, and writer Michael Ruhlman that was selected by Newsweek as one of its best books of the season.

In 2016, he published his memoir: 32 Yolks: From My Mother's Table to Working the Line (Random House), which appeared on The New York Times bestseller list.

For three years, Ripert has hosted the Tibetan Aid Project's Taste & Tribute New York benefit dinner and auction at his Manhattan restaurant, Le Bernardin.

"Funds raised at the annual Taste & Tribute benefit dinners help support efforts to restore Tibetan-language texts to libraries all over the Himalayan region.