“You’re going to love the lamb, it’s left to cook for sixteen hours and I’ve prepared a bastard sauce!” » In the chic decor of his new restaurant, 19.20, punctuated with forest green curtains, ebony wood and a marble counter, Norbert Tarayre’s banter creates a beautiful contrast effect. The former “Top Chef” candidate, who became a TV host, actor and entrepreneur, who was for around ten years behind the Bistrots pas parisiens, a chain “no fuss and no fuss” from the west of Paris, put on his apron again to settle into the five-star Prince-de-Galles hotel, near the Champs-Elysées.
The transplant of this flowery kid from Argenteuil did not go without saying in the strict world of the Marriott luxury hotel group. Especially since at 19.20 he offers cuisine worthy of a broth (an institution serving French classics at affordable prices): grated carrots, celery remoulade, leek vinaigrette, etc. But the 41-year-old chef who has worked with Mauro Colagreco and Marc Veyrat surprises with dishes more sophisticated than they seem, and is already a hit.
You offer a starter-main course-dessert menu for 49 euros, it’s expensive in absolute terms, but almost a feat for a palace…
With the management of the Prince of Wales, we had the common desire to offer an accessible menu. The idea is to attract a new clientele, and not be satisfied with the ultra-well-off clientele of the Parisian “golden triangle”. But Norbert in a palace also creates a symbolic thermal shock. Some of my former clients, who have money, had never dared to push the turnstile of a palace door, today they feel so comfortable there that they spend forever at the table, and I can’t envisage a second service [rires].
Is it a challenge to maintain these prices?
Yes ! To achieve this, we play locally: my market gardener, for example, is Laurent Berrurier, who works in Val-d’Oise. We can make it cheaper by eliminating intermediaries. But that also means that our menu is more unpredictable: there, because of the storms at sea, we have not been able to offer mussels for five days, we have to know how to explain this to the customer.
Isn’t it a paradox to put grated carrots on the menu of a palace?
My whole life is a paradox. I was born into a family of artisans, my mother was a butcher, my father a fishmonger, and at Christmas we could still eat lobster tails! When my parents separated, I grew up in Argenteuil, where making quality meals was no longer the priority. We filled the shopping cart with Garbit couscous and Prince biscuits. Today, it is certain that in a palace, making bistro cuisine is a paradox. But it’s the cuisine that suits me. I would be incapable of creating menus costing 400 euros and having the rigor expected of a three-star hotel. I’m amazed by chefs like Kei Kobayashi who make recipes for you where you need 68 grams of egg white and not 70. Me, I don’t have the talent of Joël Robuchon, the technique of Marc Veyrat, or the aura of Paul Bocuse. But I like when things move, when they live, when improvisation remains possible.
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