“When a dish is well done, it cannot be bad”

Until I was 30, I lived within the walls of La Tour d’Argent – ​​mainly at 4^e floor. It may sound surreal, but for me it was normal. We didn’t have an extravagant lifestyle, we were often sent meal trays, but these were staff meals, neither good nor bad. Twenty years earlier, my sister, from my father’s first marriage, had had a similar experience, growing up and evolving within this historic residence.

Many former employees remember these “little blond heads” who passed in the corridors, the stairs, between the tables of the empty restaurant, but I did not venture into the kitchens, it was the reserved territory of the chefs. The waiters in tailcoats seemed huge, the cooks spoke loudly, the plates and silverware flashed, it was quite magical…

Sometimes my father [Claude Terrail, mort en 2006] organized snacks for the children of the employees, and it was I who received. It was my first experiences of hospitality, in an atmosphere that was both formal and warm… We only ate at the restaurant on Sunday lunchtimes, where we had lunch as a family, after the service. We had the cheapest dishes on the menu, dumplings, gratins, roast chicken or duck, and I shared a moment with my mother and father, whom I rarely saw, while enjoying the experience of the dining room. I was sometimes entitled to half a glass of white wine.

A fabulous job

One day, during our lunch, I said that the food in my school canteen was terrible, and that I will always hate shepherd’s pie because of that. My father took the subject to heart and asked chef Manuel Martinez, Meilleur Ouvrier de France, to prepare us a shepherd’s pie the following Sunday. Of course, it was phenomenal. I understood at that moment that when a dish is well done, it cannot be bad.

My father had me quite old, at 63, and I had the chance to spend a lot of time with him. It was he who trained me in the art of catering and hospitality, then I studied management in Boston and at Insead in Fontainebleau. I took over from my father when he died in 2006. I was 26 years old. I traveled quite a bit during my studies, but at no time did I doubt my path: I knew that one day, I would take over La Tour, like my father before me. It is a great opportunity and a great pride.

I have a fabulous job, which changes every day, I work with exceptional teams and clients from all over the world who come to meet us. I do not get enough. Today, the challenge is to evolve while preserving history. There is a promise of spirit to keep, a tradition to preserve, while reinventing and modernizing the heritage. This is the case for the sign as well as for the menus that make up the identity of La Tour d’Argent, but also for the cuisine in general.