“Soups bore me, it makes me old, it’s the same thing with every spoon”

“I’ve always been cooking, but until now I never wanted to have my own restaurant. Because what I like the most is feeding people, but also changing the atmosphere, the place, the style, making a cantoche for three cents or a tasting menu in an apartment, a slightly perched birthday buffet or street food for a summer festival.

Already, when I was in college, I sometimes got up at 5 a.m. to prepare sixty pancakes for my friends at school, which they devoured in five minutes at recess. My paternal grandmother cooked a lot, my mother cooked well too. I learned with them, and giving pleasure through food has always been something central to me. However, for a long time, the idea never crossed my mind to make a career out of it. I did lots of odd jobs, actor, seller of erasers and pencils, carpenter, commercial for encyclopedias. It took me a while to find my way.

“Janette Rabache and Raquel Carena, my two great inspirations, transmitted to me the passion of the passion for good food and good drink. »

As a kid, I was fascinated by Janette Rabache, from the Café de la gare, in Ecommoy, in Sarthe, where I grew up. She was a good Rabelaisian woman, who carried around her fish on her bicycle, welcomed customers in her garden and served them in slippers in the living room. It was good, simple and generous. Janette, then Raquel Carena, from Baratin (where, when I arrived in Paris, I ate every day for a year), are my two greatest inspirations. They are the ones who transmitted to me the passion for good food and good drink.

I wanted to set up a natural wine bar, but I finally opened a bed and breakfast in Dingé, in Brittany, with my ex-wife. Self-taught, I ended up enrolling in culinary training at the AFPA in 1999, to learn a bit of the basics, anyway. I was asked to prepare meals for lots of events, I became a “caterer” – or rather itinerant cook. My hallmark has always been to bring a bistro spirit to places that are not, canteens for film shoots, weddings, parties…

Pizztrot or bisteria

A bit like this soup, basically. It’s one of my favorite dishes, even though I don’t like soups. It annoys me, it makes grandma, it’s the same thing with every spoon. But this soup, it’s rock’n’roll, it looks like me, there are lots of different textures and tastes, marine, creamy, sour, smoky, soft, crunchy, each bite is different.

It’s ultra-simple, but it’s immediately bistronomic. With buttermilk, which gives a slightly tangy, fermented taste, and seafood products, haddock and mussels, which are what I prefer to work with… Especially the mussels from the island of Groix, where I settled with my wife. and children since confinement.

I even ended up buying a restaurant on this island where there is nobody in winter, full of people in summer. It will be a bistro with pizzas, a pizztrot or a bisteria, as you prefer – a convivial thing. With people coming and going, the sea all around, good food and good wine. We’re going to be fine. »