In 1986, Alain Passard opened his restaurant Arpege, previously run by his own master Alain Senderens under the name Archestrate. He named it so to pay tribute to music, his second passion and decorated the restaurant in an Art Deco style.
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First and Foremost thank you for welcoming me here today. It is such an honor. As you know I am not a journalist of profession, the magazine asked me to interview you because I am known for being a real gourmet. Everyone knows my admiration for you, so here I am, as an admirer, as a friend, to interview you.
Maybe it will be a subjective interview because I will ask you some questions that really come within me and would want to have some lightening about your persona. Talk about my passions, your passions and see how can we qualify you to understand you better. I would want to ask you some questions regarding the philosophy of the kitchen.
I am a Jazz lover and I admire its improvisation as well as creativity and when I was asked to interview you the first idea that came to my mind was to ask you, right away, at the beginning of the interview, if you are seeing the parallel between music, especially the music of Jazz that is based on improvisation and the cooking.
In Jazz as you know, its all about the notes that create the new melodies; in the kitchen its all about the products and the new tastes with whom we do some creations. And by chance I learned that you were playing an instrument of Jazz that was the saxophone and that your father was a musician.
My source of inspirations are xxx and John Coltrane. They are for me the motors. Because first of all as far as what I have read from them, they were gourmets, musicians that liked to eat, enjoyed the table and even more so they were functioning their senses. The ear is very important for a musician as well as in the kitchen. To know and, listen to the chant of the fire and then to experience the hand and the gesture. This hand on the saxophone tenor, its for me something marvelous because it is an extraordinary exercise, to be able to work the hand in such a way. Also in cooking there is nothing without hard work. And I see with the years that my hand is becoming prettier, more precise and more just. Coltrane said once something that was really true, he said “I want to do a music that has never been played before” and so I want to do a cuisine that has never been done before.
Aaa this is marvelous! Coltrane Is the founder of the Modern Jazz with his improvisations and his band with xxx , it was extraordinary.
And if you want, for me, there is a very strong relationship between music, painting, sculpture, dance and cooking because we solicit our gestures, our taste, the perfume, the ear and the hand. For me in cooking there is nothing without the hand. The hand is the decisive, it is what makes the difference between us the big chefs and others. Exactly like in music, the difference of the musicians was the breath, the pressure and the hand. And in the kitchen, it is even more present because between one cook and the next one there will be different gestures. We call that the beauty of the gesture. The hand that will put down the things, that hand that will cook, that hand that will mix, is what I call Grace. Everything is here and I like to work on it. It is an important school in cooking Grace, the school of Grace is important because the more elegant the gesture the more marvelous the plate. You see, it’s like in music. You were talking of the sound before and with the hand they had a velocity. They were working for hours daily on the music. And in cooking it’s the same thing, there is nothing without work. If you don’t do 6-7 hours of furnaces daily, don’t have anything, you don’t get anything. And this is fantastic.
So for you, the cuisine is an art form of creativity. And, after what you have said we see that the 5 senses find their actions in the Cuisine. The presentations of the plates are for the eyes.
In the cuisine you have the taste. In the Cuisine there is a painting. When we do a plate especially with vegetables we have a beautiful palette of colors.
And we have something fantastic in cooking, it’s the ear, the sound. It is important. We always tend to forget about the sound in the kitchen, but its important, it exists in the chant of the fire. During a cooking, doesn’t matter whether a fish, a chicken, a vegetable, the fire sings. It is upon us to listen to it to know how to correct it. It’s a love story. Its too listen, to know how to touch, how to look, to know how to taste and how to smell. Here are the 5 senses.
We see many movies about chefs in the films, and we often see Italian chefs singing while cooking. Does it happen to you? To listen to music while cooking or is the music already included in the making?
We don’t do it at Arpége , even though Arpego means music, but already we have a tight kitchen with noises. For music I need silence. But in the kitchen there are a lots of noises because chefs talk between them. And there is the noise of cooking. To do that, you need a very big kitchen with silence.
Always in the music and in parallel with Jazz, the Jazz like as you said the Jazz of Coltrane has done a revolution in music because in the music of Coltrane there were lots of revolutions, from the bebop to the music of Coltrane there were a lot of revolutions. In the bebop there were some rules of music notes as for example after the R minor you had to play a specific tone etc. Coltrane completely demolished all of these rules, and created some new rules. Are there any rules in the kitchen? Like with this product we have to use this oil or that product? Did you in your life completely demolished some rules and created your own or do you respect all of those rules.
You know today I have a marvelous chance, and that is that I have my own gardens, my potager (Kitchen Garden) and they taught me a lot in the way that if I use some vegetables that grew in my garden during a certain season, it works immediately. So if it’s during summer I only use the products of the season, I have noting else.
We make seasonal menus. And the nature has dictated it all. If it’s the summer we play with what we have in the garden during summer time. You never see in the casserole the summer with winter. Today if you go around markets in Paris, you see that it’s the 4 season the year round. No. The nature wrote tomatoes July, August, September and then its finished I wont touch a tomato before next year. I play with what I have in my garden and it’s the nature that offers me all that melody. For me it’s easy. My cooking became easier with working only with seasons.
Since how many years do you have your gardens?
15 years.
Also, I was wondering, very successful chefs did some investissements internationally, like Mr. Ducasse, Paul Bocuse etc but you didn’t. Are there any reasons of why you didn’t open a restaurant in a foreign country? Is it because of your attachments to your gardens or are there any other reasons?
The only reason is that I love home. I love being home, being in the kitchen being with my family, my team, my clients. I like to use my hands in the kitchen. And I think it is very important for the clientele to know that the chef is here cooking for them. I see that when I enter the restaurant the people say “we saw the chef”. It is important. I never wanted any other restaurants because we can’t be in two places at the same time. When we do such a personalized cooking like mine there is no other way. There was only one Coltrane. I am in the same dynamic of a big musician.
What is extraordinary is that when I thought about you, I thought about Jazz. It really stands out.
Long time ago, maybe 15 years ago, the first time I dined at yours I asked for a “Ris de Veau” and it was accompanied with some warm “dates”. And when I degustated them, inside, there was a “confit” of lemon and, it was like a firework in my mouth. That was a realization and a sight of Jazz. It was tenderness then violence, an explosion of tastes like the explosions of sounds.
There are always some music notes. There are some Octaves, Sol diesis, Fa diesis, Re, Do ☺
What is your relationship with wine and the wine waiter? What is the correlation between your courses and wine? What is you relationship with it, what is your favorite wine?
With a vegetable cuisine we prefer white wines, very mineral like the Chenin or the Riesling. And then when I do a plate, the wine waiter has a white cart. Its up to them to play, its their part, their improvisation. I am the tenor and they are the sopranos. They have their solos. It is about their creativity, their difficulties, it to them to find the wish of the customer. They know how to do it and better than me. We have a wine waiter of 5 years, a big talent. We have 5 wine waiters in total
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I want to move along to a question about your relationship with your team. Do you try to keep the same team or do you change often? Also we have parallel jobs, we are both independent, I am running big teams, 3 cabinets and with time I realized that I rather work with women rather than with men . Because men quits very easily to launch their own cabinets, but women are much more faithful, hard worker and concentrates better. Is it the same for you?
I love women in the kitchen. Their hands are more precise, delicate and elegant, Also I have a very faithful team. What is interesting is to offer them their creativity. They spent years working with me now it’s their time to push their own creativity and I like to tell them to create their own cuisine.
So they will cook and you will look and taste and correct when necessary?
Yes of course and most of the time it is very just.
Years ago I came with my friend and you signed two of my books. There was a cartoon called Julie in your books, how did you have the idea to integrate cartoons in your cooking books?
☺ It has been 7 to 8 years now and at the time it was new to have a cartoon in a cooking book. Worked well, we got them translated in 4-5 languages.
We know your love towards vegetables, now, what is your relationships with the barnyard and the animals. Do you do some breeding?
I have a very good relationship. I don’t do breeding but have friends to whom we trus, the best quality.
I permit myself because you are a maître. Besides your cooking what is your appreciation for other kitchens in the world. I would love to know your thoughts on them.
The Chinese and Japanese cooking is beautiful. Of course what interest me are the flavors, the baking. Sometimes I love to enter Chinese kitchens when I travel to Shanghai for example. I love to see what happens there. I love that relationship with the baking and the flavors. I am always inspired but I am much more interested in the hands. I like to see the precision of the hands in the Chinese and the Japanese kitchens. We have Mexican food, Moroccan food, it is extraordinaire, Scandinavian, Swedish. We have a world of beautiful cuisines.
I like to talk about another passion of mine that are Cigars. What is your relationship with the cigar and with the digestives? For you is it an indispensable element of gastronomy. Is it a whole or is it unimportant for you?
For me, my cigar is my mille-feuille. My desert. It is, a rendezvous, a cherished meeting. I like the notion of waiting. After my salted plate, it’s mu cigar. I think about it and I decide in advance, before looking at it, if I want a Robusto or a Churchill. It is my desert. Because I like the gesture, I like the flavor. I am not a cigarette smoker, I don’t like its taste. I love this object that is called a cigar, hundred percent natural. It is a mouth perfume. I like to touch it, it’s also like a skin and it tastes fantastic. I have a weakness for the Havana but I can also be interested in Nicaragua, Domenica. I like to change and try different flavors. In general, I chose in regards of what I have. I either have a big appetite or a small one. When I have a big appetite I do Diademas. It’s a great cigar, magnificent.
And you know the cigar has a ritual, it’s a passion.
Yes! It’s a daily meeting for me, right after my food.
I want to share an incident that arrived to me a while ago. I was in a restaurant that had a Smoking and non-smoking compartment. And I was dining in the smoking compartment and was smoking an amazing Cohiba Esplendidos and there was in the non-smoking part a customer who asked the waiter for me to stop smoking. The waiter refused. He called the Maitre D’Hotel who asked for the Manager who came and when he entered to the room we looked at each other, he saw what I was smoking and told the customer “listen sir, Monsieur is smoking the Cohiba Esplendidos, it is a cigar that one smokes after very good dinners, the fact the Monsieur is smoking this, it is a compliment to our restaurant and I cannot ask him not to compliment our restaurant.” The customer was shocked, he said I can’t continue enough to ask for him to smoke and the manager said “As you like sir, Véstiere!” and gave him his coat to xxx him. I found this extremely funny. And it is only in France that we can encounter such events. And I was so astonished and pleased that he presented himself to me and I wanted to offer him an Armagnac and he said “no sir please let me get that for you”, he told me his name and he added “Vice-President of the Havana Club of Paris” ☺ so it was win win situation!
I want to ask you my last questions. For example what is your view on deserts. Because every time we arrive to the deserts we feel a certain remorse eating it. We want it but we always have some bad conscience about it. What is approach, you philosophy towards deserts?
Just to tell you, you shouldn’t put a soufflé of chocolate in front of me because its done especially with some vanilla ice cream, its finished, its dead! But it is true that ı like sorbets, especially with some berries in the garden, some fruits. I like because the sorbet is very quenching, it is very light, it is a desert we can eat without guilt. And with a cigar it can be very pleasant with the contrast of temperature. And we serve some sorbets. As we are very seasonable at the moment we work with apples, pears, strawberries, berries so we do some pies, mille-feuilles. It all comes from us and it is very reassuring because all are organic like our vegetables and so we have some real flavors.
There is always this question, which one do you prefer, cooking with butter or olive oil?
I like to conjugate both. Meaning if I take a vegetable with a little bit of olive oil and some butter with salted. But also I love to cook them alone with butter or olive oil or even nut oil. I like both. My Breton origins makes me think that maybe salted butter may interest me more but the realization of the olive oil is beautiful work and it gives a lot perfume and lightness to a plate.
And my last question for the people of Istanbul. If you know Istanbul, what do you think about it?
I went there once for a cooking for a private customer of mine. I adored the market but what really intrigued me was the ambience in the restaurants. Such marvelous ambiences, festive, we laugh, we talk, I like when we are not in something cold. It lives! And the city is very alive! It is wonderful and in Istanbul we like being at the table, we like to eat its part of the quotidian. The meal is important and that for me marvelous. There are countries where we don’t like the table, where the dining doesn’t have a big importance. In Turkey they cook in the restaurants but also in the homes, for the families. Mother, grandmothers cook, this is important.
Please tell to this entire beautiful customer of Turkey, Welcome to Arpége. When they come to Paris they must call us and we will also try to find them a table in Turkey to make them content.
Thank you very much!