“You can’t appreciate porcelain, beautiful plates and tableware if you don’t like to eat. In my family, we are bon vivants, and have been for several generations.
My father was raised in Paris by his grandparents. His grandfather worked in porcelain in Limoges, and his grandmother, who ran a small tableware shop on rue de Paradis, was a very good cook and a tutelary figure in the family that I had the lucky to know until my adolescence. It was with her that my father learned the values of gastronomy and cooking techniques.
She drew her inspirations from left and right, handwritten the recipes in a notebook that my father treasured: liver pâté, birds’ nests, rabbit with mustard, hedgehog cake, partridge with cabbage, pike dumplings , bouillabaisse… but, above all, pistou soup, which is my Proust madeleine.
“Despite ancestors in porcelain, a great-uncle sommelier at the Tour d’Argent, an uncle at the head of a brewery and a restaurateur father, it took me a long time to return to my origins. » Mary Castel
We are not from the South, even if my great-grandmother had Spanish origins, but every summer we met in the family house, in Périgord. On August 15, for Sainte-Marie (my great-grandmother’s name was Marie-Henriette), we prepared a gigantic pistou soup.
It was always a great moment, because there are a lot of vegetable cuts and other preparations ahead of time, everyone got involved. Everyone had their role: the little ones shelled, seeded or peeled, the older ones cut, chiseled, chopped, pounded… These times in the kitchen, when we already gather around a table, are sometimes even more powerful and precious than the time of the meal itself.
I’m not a great cook, I don’t have any technique, but I know how to manage with a recipe and I love to cook for family and friends, when I have time, during the holidays.
With ancestors in porcelain, a great-uncle sommelier at the Tour d’Argent, an uncle at the head of a brewery and a restaurateur father, it took me a long time to return to my origins. I first wanted to work in art, to be an auctioneer, to have a gallery, then I worked in a communication agency for eighteen years.
When I started going to restaurants quite a bit, I was struck by the fact that no matter what the dish and how many hours the teams put in, it always ended up on a basic big white plate. And then, one day, in the street, I saw a box with the sign “Fragile”, and I had the idea of creating Maison Fragile. I set up the project and proposed to my father, retired, and my brother to work with me. Maison Fragile echoes the family heritage, but also my little sister born with Down syndrome, who died very young. She was fragile, too, and, in our work, we made a lot of commitment to disability, to stay with her for a bit.
On August 15, the whole family gets together, even today, around a pistou soup. This is the dish that always brings us together. »