“Cooking has always had a place in our family, even though my parents were more like ‘supermarket kids’. They separated when I was 3 and quickly remarried, both of them. I mostly lived with my father, in the Yvelines, where he was director of research at the National Institute for Agricultural Research; I spent weekends with my mother in Paris. At my father’s, we ate very varied, he designed menus and never made the same dish twice. The meal was a real ritual that lasted two hours, and that every day. Honestly, I could have been disgusted…
My mother cooked a little and often made the same recipes: tomato risotto, roast beef and, above all, pork with burnt onions. It’s a simmered dish that I ate all my childhood and that my mother still prepares once or twice a month: for me it represents a safe bet, an anchor. The onions came back in the bard, the fat of the pig. The potatoes cook in the onion juice, and all the tastes mingle. At the end, the onions are halfway between caramelized and charred, which gives a very particular taste to the dish. It’s on the wire, because the burnt taste must not take precedence over the rest…
My mom was in advertising, that’s how I got into it. I passed a science baccalaureate, I didn’t really know what to do, I continued with a HEC preparatory course then a business school. I then did an internship at BDDP (now TBWA), where my mother worked. I liked it, I stayed in the area. After my cooperation in London, I went to live in Los Angeles for a few years with my first wife, an American. I worked in this environment for twenty-four years, until 2018…
Dream of creeks and cliffs
But I always had in mind the desire to do something in food or wine, the passions that inhabited me. One day, in Etretat, at the top of the cliffs, I thought to myself that it would have been great to have a place to land in front of this magnificent view. I thought : “There are many beautiful sights in the world and not enough restaurants to take advantage of them.” I then scribbled a drawing on a piece of paper, something that looked like a big eye, to admire the view. Gradually, the idea took shape to set up a mobile restaurant, which temporarily sets up where there cannot be one. I met an architect, François Muracciole, enthusiastic about the project, and we moved forward together.
I wanted to create an eco-responsible place, both in terms of energy and water and waste, because if you temporarily settle in nature, you have to limit disturbances and have the lowest possible impact. The result is Ventrus, a new kind of mobile restaurant, which stays on site for six to twelve months. After the banks of the Villette canal in Paris, I dream of setting it up in the creeks of Marseille. And in Etretat, of course. The reality is crazier than the dream, everything is possible. »