VShe chef from Saint-Etienne with his iconoclastic cuisine has had three stars in Paris since 1998. At the same time, he manages around fifteen establishments around the world and has just taken over the stoves of the Villa Saint-Ange, in Aix-en-Provence.
“I was a little annoyed when you asked me to choose a dish to write about in the newspaper. Am I able to show something that makes sense? Yes and no. Finally, yes, insofar as it is a dish representative of the cuisine that I defend. So there you have it, the “pocket cocktail”. That is to say amuse-bouche, but I hate this expression, I find it vulgar. While “pocket cocktail”, it slaps! It’s a little story for the client, told in the intimate, a sequence very quickly tasted [six préparations qui s’avalent en une ou deux bouchées]where each element must appeal.
In a cocktail, there is the idea of a crowd. And what makes my cuisine unique is the diversity. I want to please people and offer them the maximum. And then there is also a secret motivation. When I started my career, I said to myself: if I give a lot, in the heap, there will be at least one thing that will be good! [Rires.] The challenge, in the six elements present, is that there is no repetition. And we completely renew the cocktail every three weeks: we refine it every day and when it’s very refined, it’s a sign that we have to stop. It may seem like an anti-commercial strategy, but I prefer emotion to success.
There really isn’t a set rule for crafting. The elements are independent, but they respond to each other. Sometimes, these are little nods to my daily life. The vegetable curry comes to me from a charity operation we did in March in Saint-Etienne, where we had to imagine a dish not too expensive for 600 people. Inside, there are parsnips, onions, apples, bananas… Yes, I know, today, you have to be a locavore, but the banana from Martinique, I have the right, right? We are not going to give up overseas! Of course, I pay attention to sourcing, but I always have been and I don’t want to make a political argument out of it. I stopped the mangoes flown in from Peru, I’m not completely stupid.
Contrasts of tastes
I also let myself be inspired by the season and the beautiful products, like for these “raw slices of Mediterranean bluefin tuna, poivrade artichokes, wild seaweed”. Even though tuna is a fatty fish, I found it a little lean on the palate, so I added a layer of caramel to give it flavor density. I work on textures, stacks, contrasts of tastes. I have a fairly simple kitchen actually. Really. Infusions, decoctions, rotators to extract juices, it bothers me, it’s not me. I like this immediate side, a little wild, boom!
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