“I have gastronomic memories that date back to the age of 5”

For a long time, I was a petit fours merchant: I organized receptions for caterers, without being a cook. This profession consisted first of all of counting forks and coins, without any glamor, even if we also tell great stories. I was born into a bourgeois family at a time when the hotel school was considered a siding. Since I was a good student, I found myself in preparation, then studying economics and sociology. I landed a job at the United Nations, but it didn’t turn out to be as interesting as hoped.

Restoration had always been an old dream. My father was a beverage distributor for cafes. Cooking was a real subject for us, we ate well at home, we liked good products and we often went out to restaurants with the family. I was an only child, my parents took me everywhere.

“With my baccalaureate +5, I struggled to find the gateway to a sector where you arrived at 16 to learn how to peel potatoes. »

I have gastronomic memories that go back to the age of 5: Jacques Maximin’s courgette flowers at Negresco in Nice, Joël Robuchon’s puree at Jamin in Paris, Le Pré Catelan, where we went for my 10 years, with Gaston Lenôtre who circulated in the room. We frequently went to Vivarois and Dodin Bouffant – places whose decor, service and clientele made a big impression on me as a child.

So I was immersed in this world, but it wasn’t until I was 25 that I decided to turn to the hotel and catering industry. With my bac +5, I struggled to find the gateway to a sector where you arrived at 16 to learn how to peel potatoes. I landed in Savignac, a hotel management school in Périgord, determined as ever.

Quickly, I headed to the world of caterers. I worked for Saint-Clair, Dalloyau, and finally Lenôtre, where I spent ten years as director of major events, then event creation. I worked with the chefs on the product, the storytelling, the universes that we created each season…

And then there was the Covid, a redundancy plan and a new life. Today, I am on my own. I always do events, and I also have fun working as a contractor for agencies, imagining atmospheres by assembling objects. I take into account the wishes, the ideas and the constraints of the event, and I work on the table, the chairs, the tablecloth, the dishes, the flowers, the general atmosphere and, of course, what will be there. on the plate. I hunt a lot, I have always hunted.

I don’t collect things of value, rather I buy items in relation to each other, and I like to give objects a second life. ” ugly ». There is a poetry of the bizarre that touches me a lot. With the pandemic, everyone sat down to eat, we emptied the cupboards, we brought out the old accessories, we started cooking but also setting tables by telling stories. This is the idea of ​​my book Second hand, which Sonia Ezgulian made the recipes.

And it is the idea of ​​this pork dish, which tells the season, the products of the moment, my passion for chickpeas which were the flagship ingredient of my confinement, and for dishes that simmer for a long time and are shared around a large table.