“The cooks, the ways of doing things, the tarte tatin, the madeleines… The cakes all have a story, often fascinating”

Throughout my childhood, in Lorraine, I bathed in the kitchen: from Thursday to Sunday, my parents held a small inn, 20 kilometers from Sarrebourg, where we lived. My mother was in the kitchen, my father behind the bar. They served unpretentious regional dishes: pea soup and sausages, lentil stew, potato kneffes, Lorraine pâté… In season, there could be big services, meals for hunters, hikers.

At 16, while my girlfriends were going out, I went to work on weekends at the family inn. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and I told myself that if I couldn’t find anything I would go and help my parents. At the time, the kitchen CAP was still a siding. But it happened naturally: I did an initial apprenticeship in a restaurant, I passed my CAP then my BEP and I found myself an apprentice at the restaurant L’Arnsbourg, a gastronomic address in the region, in Baerenthal.

I discovered a large brigade and a very structured service, but always with a family operation: the sister, Cathy Klein, in the dining room; the brother, Jean-Georges Klein, in the kitchen, the mother in pastry. I was first put in the pantry (that is to say the preparation of starters and cold dishes), but I was curious about everything, eager to learn. I would arrive very early in the morning, pester the chef to show me how to fillet fish or bridle meat, and hang around late at night to help out in baking.

“I am perpetually dissatisfied”

Madame Klein reminded me of my own grandmother, a very benevolent woman, an excellent cook and patient, who gave us a taste of everything. At the restaurant, “Mamie Klein” explained everything to me and told me lots of stories: the cooks, the ways of doing things, the history of the tarte Tatin, the madeleines… I realized that all cakes have a story. , often fascinating. I was conquered. When she retired, I was offered her pastry job. I was doing what I loved, going to work without feeling like I was working…

In 2003, after L’Arnsbourg, I applied to Pré Catelan, in Paris, which was looking for someone in pastry. I must have called fifty times a day for weeks. I was hired and stayed for sixteen years alongside chef Frédéric Anton. We won the third Michelin star in 2007, I was elected “best pastry chef of the year” in 2009, then “best restaurant pastry chef in the world” in 2018. My parents are especially proud, I am perpetually dissatisfied.

I left the Pré Catelan when Guillaume Gomez, then chef at the Elysée, asked me to come and work with him. A place steeped in history and yet another experience, where you cook sometimes for four, sometimes for two hundred… I stayed there for three years. Today, I created my own chocolate factory. The idea was given to me by the first lady and because chocolate is a material that has always fascinated me. I mainly make sweets and bars, and, to order, a tart which is the only pastry signature that I have kept from my years in a restaurant. Intense and focused, like me.