AT Rezé (Loire-Atlantique), Pauline Potteeuw opened on Tuesday May 16, “the smallest restaurant in the world”. We do not know if the slogan she found for the launch of her brand, called Farniente, corresponds to a reality: the Guinness Book of Records did not come to approve the size of the boui-boui, and appear in this directory. extremes is not the intention of this 31-year-old cook, for whom this is the first case. A “tiny” business, therefore: 10 square meters in all, the area of a second-hand Adria brand caravan, dating from the early 1980s.
The vehicle was repainted bright yellow by its owner. Nothing is missing inside to concoct flexitarian dishes: an oven, four burners, a sink, a fridge, two work surfaces, half a dozen knives… At the entrance, a mini-table has been set up at the the foot of the period benches in faded Scottish fabric: a maximum of four customers can squeeze in at lunchtime. The others will eat outside, in the parking lot of the adjoining store, Scopeli, a cooperative supermarket owned by its own customers.
It is in its shelves that Pauline Potteeuw intends to stock up to prepare, each week, two unique seasonal dishes, “ultra-fresh” and organic. On the menu for his first week: carrot tortilla with leaf coulis and lemony feta sauce or creamy spelled with asparagus and broad beans. Single dish at 9.50 euros. Count 12 euros with the dessert (panna cotta and fresh strawberries; chocolate cake with whipped cream). Who says better ?
Cooking as an antidote
Nothing predestined this native from the North to open a food truck in short circuit mode on the asphalt of a commercial and industrial zone in the Nantes conurbation. Holder of a master’s degree in public policy for sustainable development from Sciences Po Lyon and Grenoble, she joined the Ministry of Ecology (then headed by Ségolène Royal) in 2015.
At 32e floor of the Sequoia tower in La Défense (Hauts-de-Seine), the young project manager is a little bored filling in pie charts and Excel tables. She does not extend her contract, applies in the associative sector. A professional event turns tragic: she is violently attacked by an employer. A deep trauma ensues. And an antidote: cooking. “The day after the incident, I started cooking. It came as a no-brainer”says the heiress of a working-class family whose “the specialty is to make magic with leftovers from the fridge”. Its conversion is underway.
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