When you have a Sicilian mother, an Armenian father, and you grew up in the Mediterranean heat of Nice, you say “bayeta” for “kiss”. Baieta is the name that Julia Sedefdjian, 27, chose to baptize her restaurant on rue de Pontoise in Paris (5e) and its kitchen. The youngest Michelin-starred chef, she brings comfort.
Sharing a meal is a family affair for her. As far back as she can remember, the Sedefdjian table has always been generous. “My mom and my Italian aunts cooked well. I have memories of many meals with prepared dishes, mezes laid out all over the table where everyone helps themselves and around which everyone is talking loudly”, she says. His Proust madeleine? The soudjouk, a spicy beef sausage that the little girl devours with delight from the age of 2 years. “It’s really special, this relationship to food”, she is still surprised today. That’s what built it.
Was she a model student? The young entrepreneur is fed up, looks for an adjective and ends up finding an understatement to describe her schooling: “complicated”. School wasn’t his thing. If the elementary school years go off without a hitch, middle school and her passive hours of scratching paper confuse her with the system. “I didn’t hang on, she summarizes. I needed to do something real. And quickly. » Julia is a busy teenager.
“The first days were terrible”
With the support of her mother, she searches for the framework she needs. “Patience, mom accompanies me, encourages me. She drags me to open days at schools in the area. » Julia travels through the fields of possibilities and stops on an idea, which imposes itself as evidence. Why not cooking, or maybe baking? In search of a master apprentice, she discovers, in a book that references chefs likely to recruit apprentices, her future mentor. “He has a burgundy jacket while the others are all dressed in white, she remembers. In his photo, we see smoke coming out of his nostrils! He ate a “nitrodragon”, a molecular bite with nitrogen. I tell mum: I want to go to his place! »
Nice chef David Faure takes her under his wing and encourages her to pass the cooking and pastry CAPs
At 14, Julia met the cook David Faure, then chef of the Nice restaurant L’Aphrodite. They adopt. “The first days were terrible, it took me hours to cut three leeks, I didn’t understand the language of cooking. I quickly wondered what I was doing there. But the team takes me under its wing, accompanies me, trains me. » A new family is created, in which Julia learns her trade. She obtained her CAP in cooking in two years, then her chef encouraged her to also pass her CAP in pastry. In 2010, David Faure obtained a Michelin star: “An achievement for him”, she observes. A way forward, too.
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