HAS 32 years old, Omar Dhiab has just opened his first restaurant, which bears his name, in the center of Paris. Passed by the great Parisian starred tables, he develops a very delicate but full-bodied cuisine, shaken by the acidity and the presence of offal. A talent to follow.
“If my mother made me the man I am, my father formed the cook who lay dormant in me. He himself was a chef. He was born and raised in Egypt, arrived in France to work in Italian restaurants or French brasseries. Even at home, in Vitry-sur-Seine [Val-de-Marne], he cooked a lot, we never ate out. I think he wanted to pass on his traditional recipes to my brother and me. Not like in a movie, where he solemnly gave us a scribbled notebook. But always preparing the same dishes for us. Chicken corète, I must have eaten 250! And I watched him do it every time.
It was the Sunday lunch dish. He began by poaching the poultry in a broth. At 11.30 am, he called us for the first service: broth flavored with cardamom and ginger, bird’s tongue pasta, offal. We drank it standing up in the kitchen, the table wasn’t even set. The rest of the meal took place at 1 p.m., after my father had roasted the poultry very strongly in oil in a huge aluminum pan. He also made a delicious rice pilaf with a crispy part that had stuck to the bottom of the pan and a melting part. He used the broth to thicken a sauce with corète, this rather extraordinary herb: it has neither taste nor smell when it is raw, but evokes a cross between sorrel and spinach once cooked. It does not grow in Europe. My father brought back 1 or 2 kilos dried each time he went on vacation to Egypt.
Wink
When I had the project to open my own restaurant, I knew I wanted to put this dish on the menu to give a nod to my Egyptian heritage. But for this original dish, it didn’t make sense to buy corète just anywhere! When I found market gardeners in the Yvelines, 15 kilometers from the restaurant, who were ready to grow some, I said to myself: go! With the scorching summer we had in 2022, it was a real success. I harvested and dried 3 kilos.
It can be very hard to create new dishes, we often want to do too much, show all our technique. Those that tell memories, emotions, impose themselves and are easier to transmit to teams, to customers. This chicken a la corète, once the quest for grass was accomplished, didn’t ask me too much effort. Even if, at the beginning, I said to myself: take it easy on the corète, I was afraid that this unknown taste would destabilize the customers. And then I like to be consensual on poultry.
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