It’s a digital haiku published one morning in April on the Instagram account of the Parisian restaurant Sola: “Peas in full/Ceramic by the same hand fashioned/Spring is pointing its little nose. » In the photo, a cup of coal-black earth houses a sphere of pea jelly sitting on a nest of bright green pods. Both the dish and its crucible were shaped by Japanese chef Kosuke Nabeta.
Noted for having won a star in 2019, after only a year in the kitchen of his restaurant on the left bank, this sensitive cook began to create his own ceramics three years ago, thanks to confinement. They now serve as a setting for his meticulous appetizers, starters and desserts served as part of his tasting menus.
It is that, between cooking and pottery, “The parallels are intuitively numerous. In both disciplines, we go from a raw material coming from the earth, like a leek or a lump of clay, to a finished material, obtained after a slow process of transformation”, explains the native of Kagoshima (island of Kyushu, Japan), long hair in a ponytail and flowery tattoo, in the cozy chiaroscuro of his restaurant. Lighting up the hammered wooden tables, the black sandstone lampshades are also signed by the chef.
“It’s the recipe that dictated the shape”
The marriage between tableware and great chefs has always been happy. On the tablecloths, container and content are eternal accomplices, the first having the mission to sublimate the second, when it is not to be forgotten. There are countless collaborations between chefs and earthenware, ceramists or porcelain makers: the Parisian Marion Graux directly supplies a number of multi-starred tables, from Hélène Darroze to Guy Martin; Glenn Viel collaborates poetically with the Arlesian potter Cécile Cayrol for her three-star in Provence; Alain Passard poses his collages on the porcelain of Maison Fragile…
But some cooks push the acquaintance to the point of seizing the material themselves. And make it an extension of their cuisine, in a game of parallel inspirations and shared gestures. “With their multitude of techniques to master, but also a large part left to sensitivity, the two practices are for me strangely inseparable, while being different: the gesture in the kitchen is very active, we peel, we mince, we hold cadences… Ceramic is more passive, slower, you cannot force the earth to go faster”, says Kosuke Nabeta, who bends over his potter’s wheel installed in his apartment every day.
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