Ma Cuisine - from the Planet to YOUR Table!

Exploring the connections between plate and planet!

My career in food unofficially began at the young age of two when, after watching a TV show, I filleted my sister’s goldfish. I cut them in half with a pair of scissors and unceremoniously deposited them into the toilet bowl. Or maybe it began when my beloved rabbit ran away from its locked cage. My grandfather consoled me as I cried. How was it possible that my rabbit had picked the lock and escaped? Our Chef at the Auberge told me that rabbits did that sometimes. Sometimes they just ran away. That day we had a typically huge French lunch. The whole family gathered around the table; wines were poured, food served. My grandfather leaned over and asked how I liked my “chicken” leg. My god it was the longest leg ever seen. Midway through that leg my grandfather informed me I was eating my beloved pet rabbit. Damn it tasted good.

“The charcoal kills us, but what does it matter?
The shorter our lives, the greater our glory.”

- Marie Antoine Carème

I can remember quite vividly those first, very tense moments of orientation at the New England Culinary Institute. Michel LeBorgne, the Head Instructor, pacing in front of us, intimidating us. He gave a long speech of the horrors of the new life I had just signed up for. He told us we would work 100-hour weeks. When our friends and family were playing, we would be working. When our family and friends were eating their Christmas goose, we would be cooking it for someone else’s family. We would never make enough money for our own place or even our own pair of shoes. Life would be rough. Chefs, LeBorgne went on, had the highest divorce rates, suicide rates and alcohol abuse rates. It was a hard life for a chosen few. Strangely enough this excited me. The intended purpose of the speech was to weed out people not cut out for this life. Over the next two years, the taunting would get more hard-core. The hours of classes were similar to what we were going to experience in the early years of our new life.

I often felt more like I was a new recruit in the Marines than a new student at a prestigious cooking school. The old-school Chefs would bark orders like a drill sergeant at boot camp. There was no easy path through this. They wanted to break you before they put their stamp of approval on you. You had to walk the wampum line. I can remember Chef/Instructor Michel Martinez sticking his arms into a deep cauldron of boiling court bouillon gently squeezing the sides of a beautiful salmon to see if it was poached enough. Oh how I admired how he could keep his arms in the boiling liquid feeling no pain. I wanted to be like that. These guys were not mere men they were machines. I remember the day he taught us how to make a terrine of pork. We had assembled all the raw ingredients, the ground pork, fat, veal, chicken, pate spices, sel rose. He made us taste the raw mixture to see if it was salted properly. Raw pork? Raw chicken? That was supposed to kill us. These Chefs were supermen; people to be respected.

The curriculum at N.E.C.I. was set up in a way that after six months of intense training they farmed you out for a six-month internship under the guide of another Chef. I was lucky enough to be sent to the Café Mariposa at Deer Valley Ski Resort in Park City, Utah. Chef Franklin Biggs would be my next mentor. The schedule for my first week with Chef Biggs was posted. The Chef had given me three days off. I complained to him that I was there to work, not to play. In retrospect it is kind of funny, nowadays I would happily take three days off. I used to come in four to six hours early just to learn more. I would read my Repetoire de la Cuisine while riding up ski lifts. My relatives in France are constantly amazed at how little time we take off in America. Even my uncle Pierrot, who runs a beautiful Auberge in Vieux Mareuil, near Brantome, in Perigord takes a few months off during the slow season. My cousin Catherine cannot believe that an Executive Chef in America only gets one week of vacation time a year.

During my first year at school, I met Chef Louis Szathmary of the Bakery Restaurant. He came to N.E.C.I and gave a speech about the industry. A speech much like a General would give to anxious troops moments before being parachuted into hostile lands. I was hooked. I needed to be like these gods that sat before me. I ended up being Chef Szathmary’s apprentice, then his Executive Chef at the world famous Bakery restaurant in Chicago. At the tender age of twenty-one I was leading a rather large brigade at a famous restaurant. Louis was a great guy to work for. He was hard, old school and demanding. He was very firm but loving. I remember cooking for a special party and Louis corning me in the kitchen yelling “you are not my Chef you are my sh@t!” That might sound abusive to those not intimately familiar with life in a great kitchen, but it is meant to harden you not to break you. Working in a kitchen is very demanding on many fronts. You work long hours in a hot hostile environment. There is constant pressure from waiters looking for their food. Hundred of tickets with hundred of dishes all needing to come out together at the same time. I loved the pressure. I could handle it; I thrived in it. It was from him that I developed a passion for collecting cookbooks and a yearning to be a great Chef. I spent two years in the trenches with Louis. Two years that I often wish I could relive or thank Louis for. I had an old fashioned apprenticeship under him like few Chefs today get to go through.

Over the next few years I worked under more and more Chefs. I learned more and more. I was working six to seven day weeks with very little time off. The most hours I ever worked in a single week was 126. The longest single work shift I ever did was 37 hours straight. That was the norm and was expected. And I did so with pride and determination. When I had my own restaurant, I expected the same of those under me. I took no prisoners… either you worked like me or you were out.

I was married for seven years to my high school sweetheart. She would go on vacations with my family while I was working. After five years, she told me I was more married to my kitchen than her. I agreed and two years later we divorced. I wasn’t sad; I still had my kitchen and that is all I ever wanted or needed. I had many short relationships, but I was still married to the kitchen. To be great one needs to dedicate themselves. The kitchen was more important than anything else in my life. I kept on this path for a few more years.

“I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, shabby domestic cares. Their talk painted the walls of a dismal prison in which men had locked themselves up. And suddenly I had a vision of the face of destiny.”

- Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Than it came the day I had an epiphany about the restaurant business. I started to view the restaurant world through another set of eyes. My father had always told me I was a great artist but a terrible businessman. I started to be discouraged by the lack of appreciation of great food, by the way some owners only cared about money, not about quality or the art. The kitchen was always a second thought to these hackers. I was working in New York at a small, faded jewel of an Inn when my father succumbed to lung cancer. My father, my role model had passed away. In his last moments he told me he used to view the world as black and white. That as he got older he realized the world not only was black and white, but there were many shades of gray in between. That was the beginning of the end for me. I started to reflect on a lifetime of missed moments with my family. Of times when I wish I had been at Christmas with my family. The restaurant business had lost its soul in my eyes. I had sacrificed friendships, relationships and family for food. And as Marco Pierre White once said it’s just food at the end of a day, just food.

I ended up working for a German billionaire in rural Georgia on what at first looked like the pay off for a lifetime of hard work. A twenty-room country inn with 10,000 acres of hunting grounds with a restaurant that he wanted to be the best in the country. It was a great concept with beautiful facilities. After a while he allowed me to turn 80 acres into an organic farm where I could grow my own vegetables and fruits. I was in heaven. Then he abruptly fired the first general manager and hired a Scottish guy. The new GM was the physical incarnation of everything wrong with the restaurant business. One day he told me to start using frozen French toast sticks and imitation maple syrup instead of homemade French toast and real maple syrup for our overnight guests. These people were paying premium dollar for an overnight stay. I refused. About the same time I hired Walter Williams to be my farmer. Walt was a local organic farmer with a fantastic reputation for high quality produce. His tomatoes were used in the movie “Fried Green Tomatoes”. Walt was a kind, caring, nurturing fellow. We enjoyed many long talks about life in the herb gardens next to the restaurant. It was during this time that he mentioned the Appalachian Trail to me. He used to bring Boy Scout troops to the southern terminus of the trail at Springer Mountain, Georgia. I started reading everything I could on the trail. The following spring I headed northbound from Springer Mountain to Mount Katahdin in northern Maine. I hiked 2,168.2 miles.

Benton Mac Kaye, a part-time Federal employee who worked as a forester and was a self-trained planner, conceived the Appalachian Trail. In October of 1921, he wrote “An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning.” Mac Kaye envisioned a series of farms, work camps and study camps connected by a trail to be used as a respite from the tensions of industrialization. On August 14th, 1937 the Appalachian Trail became a reality. It wasn’t until Earl Schaffer in the 1940’s hiked the entire distance. Since then, thousands and thousands of people attempt an end to end thru hike. Only ten percent of those who try ever finish.

I spent the next year out of the business before I heard the kitchen calling me back. A former Sous Chef was a partner in a new Provencal concept in Chicago. He asked me if I was interested in being the Chef of it. I was excited to return the city and take on this challenge. I started working on the concept in late August of 2002. From me came the name, the logo and the menu direction. The restaurant was Southern French overall with Moroccan, Spanish and Italian influences; cuisines that have a seductive pull over me. Over the next year and a half the restaurant did extremely well. Food and Wine magazine named us as one of the top ten new restaurants in the world. Gourmet and Bon Appetit named us as places you have to go.

The whole time I was working six days a week with very little time for my private life. My mother would come with my niece once a week just so I could see both of them. I started to feel what Phil Couisineau describes as Soul Loss. “There is another call, the one that arrives the day when what once worked no longer does. Sometimes people need a shock; sometimes a tocsin call. It’s time for a wake up call. A man being fired from a job; a child runs away from home; ulcers take over the body. The ancients called this “soul loss”. Today, the equivalent is the loss of meaning or purpose in our lives. There is a void where there should be what Gerard Manley Hopkins calls “juice and joy.” The heart grows cold, life loses its vitality. Our accomplishments seem meaningless.” The joy I once felt for the business had disappeared. I started noticing how no one around me was excited about the hours they worked. How some people hid their woes in womanizing, drinking, drugs, fragile marriages. I saw people overwork themselves, losing those precious, irreplaceable moments with their spouses and children. It didn’t seem right. There had to be a way to balance work and family. I started thinking back to my father lying in the hospital bed. I had lost my desire to sacrifice my life for the restaurant industry. At the same time I met a wonderful woman named Lisa. Both of us had met after failed relationship to artists. It is because I love her that I want to live my life with her, not next to her. I am no longer interested in female roommates or solitary existences.

Long ago I admitted to myself that happiness in my life involves a certain amount of travel, well a lot of travel, and changes of scenery... some folks live their lives perfectly happy in one spot... Then there are people like me and Lisa... Perhaps it is that I need balance in my world. A balance between the hard core Chef life and the wanderer.

So we loaded up our faithful VW microbus and headed northbound to Prince Edward Island. I guess part of it is that I have always wanted to go up there and part is I am intrigued by the challenges and prospects painted by Robert and Laura Shapiro, owners of Dayboat (http://www.dayboat.ca/). So far the position is simply seasonal. Perhaps this position could evolve into something more than a summer gig, maybe not. Either way, Dayboat is going to be a fantastic experience. The menu will feature foods foraged, fished and farmed almost exclusively from PEI.

My cuisine has evolved into what Joel Robuchon calls "Cuisine Actuelle". A style of cooking where one does not hide the flavors under thousands of other ingredients or under a heavy sauce. The ingredient is prominent and featured. I am looking at the menu not in terms of being a French or Italian or Brasserie menu but a universal menu who's connecting line is the bounty of food products from the Island. I look forward with the excitment of a child on Christmas morning to discover my new world. I hope this is a bright new beginning in my constant relationship with the restaurant business... time will tell.

During the October to the following season I am going to try my hand at writing, first a book on slow food PEI style and secondly a guidebook for wayward Hippies who like to camp and travel the country in search of festivals, food, great campspots, VDUB mechanics ( an unfortunate by product of making a twenty year old microbus your home for six months), microbrews and wineries...

François de Mélogue