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Galerie de Julot

Round table about the wine: Marcel Lapierre, Michel Issaly et Marcel Richaud

They all have a same message:

Lobbies and the government is after the wine makers.

That does not sound impossible... they tend to be after decency in general.

Demorand is still playing "nooooo?"

The Danes are back!

Redzépi, from Noma, is introducing his body Thorsten Schmidt, from Malling&Schmidt, in Southern Denmark.

The guy shares their love of Danish nature...

...but he's a representative cook, as you'll see.

Also, he says that, to be innovative, you have to let your inner child take over... Those Danes really do that, as do Charroux, Ceruti, Adria, judging from what happened during this festival.

You see, oak is the national tree in Denmark. And wood chips are childhood memory for every Dane, as they build wooden stuff in sixth grade in that country. Also, they found that there is something vanilly (and also smoked, and grilled...) about that perfume. So they infused it in milk and made an icecream of it.

And they shared it with the audience.

And then they also serve the dish with the freshly cut wooden chips, inside a bag, and you open it table side, so the smell comes out before your tasting.

Now this is actual sand...

...they had a bag of water on it (sometimes with a fish inside, they added)

Then come the edibles... scallops, sour butter, seaweed...

The dish is called "on the beach". To eat it you need a spoon. As you press the water bag, the food actually falls in the spoon.

Then, still on the beach, clams in the sand -- this time this is pumpernickel and others breads, crumbed, going on the clams.

But this goes on actual sand nevertheles.

Then you go oyster fishing. In that bowl, a couple of oysters, some seaweed, some salted water.

But as this is winter, the Danish seaside is under snow and ice...

...which they recreate with dry ice

a seriously good humoured moment

lovely Redzépi came to show the end result to bloggers and photographers -- you need to go ice fishing now.

want to know what this is, do you?

Their idea of a seasonal dish... soil, frozen at this time of the year (there are berries inside, crumbed bread, and a granité of actual herbs on top)

Why are they setting wood on fire?

The dish is called “danish boyscout”, and is evocative a cabin where you have a “pique-nique” -- there's a wooden fire and some potatoes in tin foil, and of course salmon

Andrea Petrini celebrated this dish by awarding Schmidt the “best gay dish” award... I still have no idea what he is thinking about. This is a Barbie inside the price.

Stefano Baiocco – Villa Feltrinelli (Italie)

He cooked a risotto -- in general all Italian chefs at the OFF were very focused on their traditional dishes, sometimes reinterpreted

it was served with rabbit brains

Riccardo Camanini – Villa Fiordaliso (Italie)

He focused on traditionally wehat based recipes, but without wheat -- those are pumpkin chips as amuse, graded parmesan on top

Riccardo Camanini – Villa Fiordaliso (Italie)

then he did bean based pasta

Marion Monnier- La Table de Marion (Saintes)

A nice chef, working alone with his wife in a little town, using nice ingredients, unfortunately quite unable to hold his hand and prepare those wonders simply. Here you see bulots with chopped langoustines.

But that's how it ended

A Soba dish...

with buckwheat crusted seabass

A dessert inspired from an apéritif, with Pastis and peanuts

Jaques Marcon (Régis' son)

He presented the current version of the famous “brochette Margaridou” -- it starts with a sweetbread steamed for one minute.

They roll the sweebread in maizena

Those are morel cromesqui that, for some reason, they call “boule de Béchamel” -- the idea of liquid inside fritter anyway

Finishing the brochette

It's finished in the oven, served on spinachs, and the client is supposed to pierce one of the “balls” so the sauce can run

The overall impression was pretty sad -- this looked no better than the original brochette, less actually

Marcon, from this demo, felt like one of those chefs that the quest for the third star ruined. This is the famous “praliné de cèpes”

The pastry chef made a dessert too. Looked good, if pretty conventional

David Chang was there! I missed most of the demo, the result looked yum. Also, he's the only chef I saw cleaning the place itself at the end of the demo.

So who is Heston Blumenthal?

Do you see the child inside glowing in his eyes?

Well, maybe there isn't one, really?

He brought with him a video of his famous “sound of the sea” (here the actual dish)

And then proceeded to the most knowledgeable explanation of “Alice in wonderland” -- this is the fake turtle, the one they used to make “fake turtle soup” of. It's got a cal head and legs, which of course you'll find in the final dish

They do a juice with that -- it starts in the pressure cooker

Then they clarify it cold -- on a filter in the fridge, the gelatinous parts play the role of an extra filter, so a clear juice falls underneath -- this spares the heating and destroys no taste, heston claims (I for one think that he wouldn't need to clarify his stock if he did it right to start with)

Then it is frozen and juiced and they keep the dry ice resulting

that's what's left in the juicer

Then it's molded in the shape of a watch, frozen again, gold plated

So the mad hatter can dip his watch in his tea

The dish starts with the fake turtle egg (no egg component whatsoever)

cuncumber jelly and truffle are probably for the taste -- and you have a sandwich of calf head and trotter (remember the fake turtle?)

Mad hatter tea poured on

That Heston's Alice in Wonderland dish

I did not eat any of this. Yet I find it hard to imagine that it could be even remotely as fun as the story of how it is made. And in any case, it seems that the reasons those dishes are good have little to do with their “concept”. Heston was fascinating and fun, but I'm more interested in more of his stories than I am in actually trying his restaurant. Not that I won't.

Speaking of fake turtle, Thierry Marx was next. That's because he will be jury for the “bourse Badoit de la création”.

Emanuele Scarello – Agli Amici (Italie)

Another Italian revisiting his classics (yawn)

Started with a video to show us how normal he is (not that anyone had any doubt to start with...)

How surprising is this pizza? It's gambas. Get over it.

There you go. Modern pizza.

And modern day carbonara -- it's squid on mayonnaise, but the bacon is real.

They said it's sea urchins on those gnocchis but this looks doubtful

More gnocchi, suprisingly classic, with puntarelle, made of actual potato and all

Before we move to the Adria grand finale, and in the interest of full discosure, I should mention that Alexandre Gauthier, from La Grenouillère, in Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, made a good demonstration of pointless and pretentious cuisine, and also of his pretty bad temper. His ground breaking innovations, besides putting food on the side of the plate, consisted of preparing pumpkin like carrot salad and also of burning onions "à l'unilatérale" and grading raw potatoes on top of it. It's a pretty sorry state of affairs when bored critics push forward a pretentious clown like this.