In a few weeks, it will be a year since France changed its habits and closed its restaurants because of the pandemic.
While waiting to book a table on the terrace again in the shade of a parasol or inside a cosy room, I suggest you take a tour in the kitchen to meet the three greatest French chefs.
Anne-Sophie Pic, Sylvestre Wahid and Michel Sarran, whose star-studded reputation is not to present anymore, have agreed to answer our questions. Just like their tasty creations, their advice and their rituals interweave warmth and scents.
1. Anne-Sophie Pic, the most starred chef in the world
Credit: Instagram @annesophiepic
What is the best advice you have ever received?
Experience is not passed on, it is learned. You have to make your own experience.
What is the best advice you would give to an apprentice?
Do not be discouraged, always keep hope. Show patience and curiosity.
What inspires you to create a new dish?
Getting into a state of being inspired is a particular process. It is continuously awakening your curiosity in search of new flavours. It is about meeting others, understand the product and therefore meet those who produce them.
Credit: Instagram @annesophiepic
What is the best compliment you have ever received?
The best compliment I can receive is reading or listening to the emotions of my clients.
On a more personal level, the best compliment is being a trustworthy person you can count on.
Do you have any rituals that you apply before each kitchen?
I wash my hands!
I go around each of the stations in my kitchen to taste the aromatics and more particularly the sauces, the cornerstone of my cooking. This allows me to know if my teams are in the right balance before starting the service.
– Do you have a lucky charm, a favourite object, an amulet?
I am very attached to my little notebooks in which I write all my inspirations and the coloured markers that accompany them.
2. Sylvestre Wahid, two-starred in the Michelin Guide, opens his own eponymous restaurant in Courchevel:
Credit: Instagram @sylvestre_wahid
What is the best advice you have ever received?
Get your work done until the end, that when you embark on a path (in this case, professional here), you have to give yourself all the means to get there, even if the way is long and arduous. Patience pays off.
What is the best advice you would give to an apprentice?
To be curious!! Above all! Open books, take an interest in different techniques and learn foreign knowledge; to travel!
Gastronomy has no borders, and what a joy to discover all the techniques, flavours, culinary traditions all over the world! I think that the cuisine of tomorrow will be universal… We will see a little distant inspiration in each kitchen again…
What inspires you to create a new dish?
What I like is the challenge imposed on us by the current ecological reality;
Respect the seasonality of the products, I think that there are no longer 4 seasons but 12 months of the year when we must use the best product at the best time!
I find inspiration in the constraint: Less animal protein, more respect for the seasonality of the product… well, like a painting, I have a colour palette in mind, which determines my future dish.
Credit: Instagram @sylvestre_wahid
What is the best compliment you have ever received?
That my cooking is sincere, that I do not cheat, that I have given a lot of emotions.
Do you have any rituals that you apply before each kitchen?
Thank life for all that it offers us … and cook with respect for this gift that is provided to us …
Do you have a lucky charm, a favourite object, an amulet?
Not really an object, rather positive affirmations, such as mantras, which allow me to keep my feet on the ground but my head in the stars.
3. Michel Sarran, two-star Michelin guide and one of the favourite jurors of the Top Chef show
Credit: Instagram @michel_sarran
What is the best advice you have ever received?
You have to believe in yourself, we have unsuspected resources, and you have to go to the end of your ideas and never give up.
What is the best advice you would give to an apprentice?
Believe in yourself; on the other hand, we have nothing without anything, so it takes a lot of work, stubbornness, and one day it smiles.
What inspires you to create a new dish?
It’s merely my life because I believe that cooking is a means of expression, it’s a bit of popular art in that sense, so it’s my origins, the Gers where I was born, Toulouse where I live, but it’s also my travels, my daughters, my family. All these things which, at one point, will create a mechanism that makes me want to give the genesis to a dish.
Credit: Instagram @michel_sarran
What is the best compliment you have ever received?
With tears in the eyes, I had a hell of a feeling. When we cook, we cook for that. We are looking for emotions, so when we manage to stir, it’s the most beautiful response to all these sacrifices made.
Do you have any rituals that you do before a show or before every kitchen?
Not really, but at the restaurant, every Friday at 11 a.m., we do what is called “mass”, where we meet the whole team, to strengthen ties with the team. We have an aperitif together, we enjoy a few small dishes, a few bites, just to have a moment.
Do you have a lucky charm, a favourite object, an amulet?
I’m not at all a fetishist; for me, what matters above all is human, things much less, I am not superstitious, I am quite Cartesian by my training.
Their tender, sensitive, and demanding visions whet the appetite. The know-how and the quality of our food are as necessary as the emotions that animate their creations. Indispensable advice that does not stop at the kitchen doors, so we know that we will be there as soon as their… essential restaurants reopen!