A year ago, Yves-Marie Le Bourdonnec gave up his apron. In February 2022, he decided to pass on his group to its shareholders-breeders and announced that he would stick to the role of ambassador. It didn’t take long for the star butcher (and butcher to stars) to get back behind the chopping block, but it’s not in one of the five butcher shops that bear his name, located in the chic districts of the capital, that he has been found.
Yves-Marie Le Bourdonnec, who was one of the first, in the early 2010s, to advocate the absolute primacy of meat quality, to praise the crossing of cattle breeds and to profess the art of maturation, cutting now spider, flank steak and sirloin in Puisaye, in the butcher’s shop in Bouhy (Nièvre), a town of 460 inhabitants. His second home is a few kilometers away; Having become an employee of the group he founded, of which he remains the figurehead even if he is no longer involved in management, he recognizes that he no longer needs to work hard to earn a living. But the shop was desperate to find a buyer and the elite chevillard let himself be softened. “My ex-partners think I’m crazy”, he confides.
We imagined the effect of a classic post-Covid syndrome of the urban outcast, irremediably attracted to the country of Colette. Error. “I’m a country boy, but I really like Paris. I make a somewhat selfish choice: to start from scratch, to reconnect with what I experienced when I started. And I’m served: arrived in June, the flower in the gun, I find all the hassle of the one who starts, laughs Yves-Marie Le Bourdonnec, while checking the perfect alignment of the dishes in the refrigerated display.
Popular franc-manger
Croque-monsieur (2.90 euros), beef tongue (5.50 euros), queen bite with sweetbreads (3.90 euros), Burgundy snails (8.40 euros per dozen), large pâté – mother (14.90 euros per kilo), … “I don’t do anything fancy. » The new owner of the Bouhy butcher’s shop says this with a detachment that deceives no one. He spends hours preparing his specialties, an ode to popular frank-eating. “I worked in a group of fifty employees, with a financial director, I wanted to turn the page. I was too far from the chopping block,” he almost apologizes.
It’s nothing to say that this man loves his job. At 55, he is delighted to finally be able to indulge in the simple joys of charcuterie, a specialty he overlooked in his youth and which he now embraces as a passion too long contained. Making garlic sausage gives him a real sense of pride. He gets up at 4:30 a.m., took cooking lessons – “I didn’t know how to make a béchamel” – and uses the talents of his wife, Betty, who did not eat meat when she met him. “We don’t need to work, we’re exhausted but we love it”, he summarizes. The friend who had offered to embark on the adventure with him dropped the business after two months.
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