I got up early to try to get interesting lights in morning Deauville.
Deauville is pretty much Faubourg Saint Honoré sur Seine: Dior, Hermés, Weston, Printemps, Ceruti... they're all here so you don't have to drive back for your regular shopping needs.
They also have interesting shops...
...such as this one
The stage
Pierre Hermé opened the party...
...he talked about his new series of creations, called "entre" (in-between) because they are halfway because restaurant and shop pastries.
You can see that this an intense guy holding back...
and he says of lot of sensible things...
...also read excerpts from a Simon article bashing "pre-desserts" as useless stomach filling...
Most of the time, the kid inside him is buried deep inside...
...not always.
I wish his food was as free and sincere as his speech.
That young lady was always preparing the stage between demos
Sébastien Demorand hosted the show with maestria...
...one running gag was how most chefs were at loss with the induction burners...
But Sebastien was there to help
This is Bourdas, from SaQuaNa, in Honfleur
He's a talker -- lots of ideas about what clients want, what cooks need, how he opens only seven meals a week, how clients don't care about cooking but want to have a good time...
Sebastien is a litte devil
Sometimes he looks like Jack Bauer disarming a nukular bomb
One of bourdas dish: potatoes barely cooked in fat and stock, clams, parsley sauce
At the beginning, all bloggers and photographers were allowed on stage...
...It wasn't fun for the audience. They were kicked out quickly and that's why, for many dishes, you won't have a picture from me.
Hope you can live with it
Another Bourdas dish, scallop based. So ugly it's great, eh?
Laurent Chareau – Le Chat (Villechaud)
He came with a winemaker buddy, from the other side of the Loire river
He was the other cook in the Macval adventure (besides Inaki Aizpitarte)
He cooked a nice red mullet in shrimp chips -- simply innovative, looked good (a passion fruit sauce at the bottom)
Lunch is 17€, dinner is 35€.
Bertrand Grebaut – Agapè (Paris) -- the new wonder boy of Parisian cooking
Mostly a mini-Passard
Like him, and like his partner, a dandy
But he's younger than both and has even more attitude
Demorand likes to sniff...
...and share
the smoked egg on asparagus
Lieu jaune (yellowtail) cooked slowly, wrapped in lardo, a Jerusalem artichoke purée/sauce, and guess what on top
Paco Morales – Senzone (Madrid) -- I have nothing good to tell you about that young boy -- apparently he used to run Adoritz's kitchen, and now he makes stupid dishes looking like puke and claiming to be homages to Bras, Aduritz, etc.
Emmanuel Renaut – Flocons de Sel (Megève)
A really moving chef -- One funny thing is that he came out much more smiling on the pictures as during the show, where he gave the impression of being very lowkey and even somewhat grumpy
Chefs I like like to share
Sea urchins it was
Someone enjoyed it
That dish looked pretty brilliant "oursins café crème". An emulsion of jerusalem artichocke, expresso and cream in those urchins. He also made a very simple dish of Fera (the lake fish) that showed respect for the ingredients and a confident knowledge of what matters in a dish.
The bookshop La Cocotte was there
Sometimes Demorand looks like Jack Bauer...
...Sometimes like Alan Shore
Jordi Butron – Espai sucre (Barcelone)
He gave a seven point lecture about the future of restaurant pastry
Seriously. Just after lunch.
The whole room was sleeping (see Bruno Verjus' blog for a picture)
And a lot of it was full of obvious things
But at the same time, he was really sharing
And he is one of the only ones in this festival who gave us an honest insight into his creative process.
The dessert he ended up demonstrating was inspired by a classic ginger/ginger ale/vodka cocktail
It looked brilliant
Marcel Lapierre, the pope of the natural Beaujolais, came with the next chef...
Katsumi Ishida – En Mets fais ce qu’il te plaît (Lyon) The guy came with a live eel that he peeled, live too. That was gore
The food he made looked awesome -- simple, frank, and über-precise
Watching the Pourcels, I started being struck that the difference between the different chefs before us was not so much what they said...
...it was the sincerity.
The Pourcels looked like they were now following their own way
speaking their own language
not trying to be anyone else anymore
Next came the Danes, and they stole the show
Mads Reflund – MR (Copenhague)
René Redzépi, from Noma, was here to help and introduce his buddies
At that very moment, he was just Mr. induction
Isn't René handsome?
Mads, with René and Thorsten's help, prepared a SEVEN course menu over the course of 35minutes.
It was all wonderfully ingredients based
Those young guys are just paying a constant tribute to the natural resources of their country
It's almost like a pagan cult
Innovation comes as a necessity, to express their nature, serve the ingredients, without ever forgetting how good it should be
lobster yum
Now he's opening a beet he cooked in a salt dough
They were back the next day
After the flow of youth and innovation, came the wisdom of Frank Ceruti (Le Louis XV/Alain Ducasse -- Monaco)
He made pasta cooked like a risotto with a lot of vegetables, that he had brought from his Riviera
Despite a lot of mandatory Ducasse BS, his sincerity was totally moving.
At some point, he told Demorand he couldn't discuss with him as he was focused on not screwing his dish (Pasta,as you'll recall)
The Ducasse BS included a legend about the origin of that recipe...
And also claiming that they invented rubbing their knife with garlic when chopping truffle...
But Ceruti is for real -- the actual, real core in the middle of that all pretending empire
And he was pretty lost with the induction, too
Wish you could smell it
Next came the favourite of the show, Peter Nilsson (La Gazetta, Paris)
He's mostly a good looking, lowkey, rather funny Swed
And that seems to explain his success more than anything... here, he is wonderfully daring in cooking parsley roots
And some kidneys
he also did razor clams with carrots. Groundbreaking.
