Almost French (34 page)

Succulent ingredients are considered the mark of the master chef and Ducasse’s press attaché had advised me to come early to see the raw produce. At seven in the morning, the second chef François Piège is instructing the twenty other cooks in crisp whites to move and weigh the deliveries of live
langoustines
, prawns and Périgord truffles. The air crackles with urgency. Every order is answered with a barked chorus:
OUI CHEF!
Close your eyes and you might think it’s a military training camp.

For the next four hours, the chefs are preoccupied with minutiae. (Curiously they are all men—the world of high cooking in France remains resolutely male.) Perfect-looking asparagus spears are trimmed of their tiny pointy knuckles which will later be used to flavour sauces. Another chef carefully shaves the black truffles into thin discs, measuring and weighing each slice to ensure exactly the right thickness. Although this twenty-kilo box is worth the price of a new car, they look deceptively ordinary—like clumps of dirt. Someone else selects only the inner, baby leaves from healthy bunches of herbs. Parsley is being reduced to a paste, pushed and repushed through a superfine sieve, and I wonder why it couldn’t be zapped in a mixer. At the Alain Ducasse shortcuts are apparently out of the question.

When the main man finally tears into the kitchen just before lunch, it’s not to stir and slice. Trailed by a French film crew, Ducasse consults urgently with Piège, tastes a sauce, all the while staring intently at a bank of television screens which monitor the restaurant. Tiny beads of sweat bud on the brows of the young cooks as their boss scans the gleaming benches for stray olive oil dribbles or splashes of stock. (There aren’t any.) In France, celebrity chefs enjoy the sort of hero worship that in Australia is reserved for sports stars. Like Paul Bocuse and Joël Robuchon, Ducasse has become a travelling ambassador for French cuisine—and something of a media darling.

But more than any of his contemporaries, Ducasse has redefined what it means to be a grand French chef. With a growing list of restaurants—one in Paris, another in New York plus the three-Michelin-star Louis XV in Monte Carlo—there is an increasing demand for him to consult, give interviews and take on new business projects. Ducasse is more likely to be caught leaping into Lear jets than standing at the stove. He’s a
provocateur
and you sense his business savvy and global outlook might irritate the more traditional members of the French culinary establishment. But despite his designer suits and jet-setting, up until 2001 the chef manages to maintain his six-star status.

Although he’s friendly and unpretentious, interviewing Ducasse is difficult. He crams more into sixty seconds than most of us fit into one hour which means you can’t hold his attention for longer than a five-minute stretch. His office telephone rings often and we are frequently interrupted by assistants and staff bearing messages and papers to sign. At one point he has receivers to both ears while he checks the computer for bookings at the Louis XV. Everything is done
at sprint speed—the way he ricochets his chair to reach an article from the stack of international magazines which have recently interviewed him; his rapid-fire way of talking. He says his dream is to steal forty-eight hours from a day of twenty-four.

Asked to define what makes high French cooking so special, Ducasse doesn’t talk about luxury ingredients but the enigmatic
touche française
, which I’d witnessed earlier in the kitchen. ‘It’s a bit like in haute couture,’ he explains. ‘We’re not the makers of the rarest silks, there are beautiful silks and materials everywhere in the world but there is a French signature. And I think our cuisine—before the produce—comes down to a
savoir faire
, an incredible heritage.’

This know-how means that Paris is home to some first-rate restaurants which elevate eating to gastronomic experiences. But Ducasse admits that lower down the price scale there is less magic. Finding simple, fresh affordable food in Paris is difficult, he says, adding it’s not possible for under F200 a head, roughly $60. There’s a gap in the market. Judging from the entrepreneurial gleam in his eyes, Ducasse would like to fill it.

But for the moment at least, his name is not synonymous with cheap eats. By 1.30pm, the Alain Ducasse dining room has filled with the sort of sleek suits you’d expect at a restaurant where lunch may cost anywhere between $250 and $500 per person. Our table—I am accompanied by a photographer who is taking pictures for the story—is in the corner, a perfect vantage point from which to survey the room. Dark wood panelling, a
trompe l’œil
library and sombre green walls give it the feel of a stuffy gentlemen’s club. (The restaurant has since moved to the Hôtel Plaza Athénée where the décor is fresher.) Waiters glide around the dining room,
almost outnumbering the guests. They are charming and unfailingly attentive. A wee footstool magically materialises on which to rest my bag—a bulky black vinyl thing deformed by pockets and zips for notepads, leaky pens and god knows what which looks totally incongruous atop the plush velvet pelt. Across the dining room, perched on another footstool is a chic beige handbag (probably a Kelly bag with a price tag of about $6,000) which belongs to a handsome woman whose tanned skin shines like polished wood. I vow to upgrade—if not to Hermès then at least to leather.

Would Madame like sparkling or plain water, our waiter enquires. Small bubbles, medium-sized bubbles or fat bubbles? Butter with or without salt? This pampering doesn’t seem pretentious or the slightest bit intimidating.
Au contraire
, I’d like to move in.

‘You’ll eat quite a lot of black truffles today,’ the waiter announces, outlining the set menu of seven courses which consists of an avalanche of priceless delicacies. I think of my usual home-made lunches: boiled potatoes topped with grilled cheese or instant Asian noodles swimming in soy sauce. A rivulet of vintage champagne tickles my throat. I have to stifle an overexcited giggle.

First up are the
langoustines
(looking a little less active than they were this morning) served with Iranian caviar with greenish egg-bubbles so fat and glossy that it seems totally unrelated to the gaudy red and black stuff sold in supermarkets. The next four courses all come with truffles: truffle-flavoured ravioli stuffed with duck foie gras;
coquilles
St Jacques with more black truffles; fattened young chicken with a creamy truffle sauce followed by a frilly salad topped with truffle shavings to cleanse the palate before cheese and dessert.

It must have taken some poor dog weeks to snuffle out the fortune of fungi I wolf down in less than two hours. For someone who has never tasted truffles, this is quite an initiation. Truthfully, at first they leave me rather indifferent. I can’t discern a distinct, to-die-for flavour. Every dish is delicious but might it have been just as great without the truffles? It takes the simple salad where there is little competition from other ingredients to win me over. The texture is sort of crunchy and biting into a slice releases a warm earthy aroma. It’s difficult to describe the taste, maybe it’s more fragrance than flavour. Certainly it bears no resemblance to ordinary mushrooms.
Like tree bark
, I scribble finally in my notepad, an incongruous comparison (given I’ve never actually eaten tree bark) which would no doubt send the boys in the kitchen into a collective swoon.

The food at the Alain Ducasse is ‘bourgeois’, in the words of the chef. At his Monaco restaurant the culinary style is Mediterranean and you sense fresh fish and olive oil flavours are his personal preference. He recognises that traditional French cuisine has an image problem—‘it’s considered old and heavy’—and says that his job is to give it a modern spin. But how modern can bourgeois cuisine get? Although rich, the sauces at lunch are not heavy. They are subtle yet intense, brewed from those
bouillons
I saw bubbling earlier. Each dish exudes delicacy and depth. By the end of our meal both the photographer and I are feeling faintly sick.

Still—and this is telling—I struggle on to the end. When the post-dessert trolley of patisseries arrives, each creation so exquisite they look like collectors’ items, I even summon the stamina for a slim coffee éclair. Admittedly, when it’s time to leave it requires a heroic effort just to get up from the table. Our charming waiter presents us both with the customary
gifts: a personalised menu detailing the wine and courses we’d had and a round loaf of bread baked in the Alain Ducasse kitchen—a handy snack for the trip home. I stumble into the fading afternoon light, bloated but also utterly content.

It was a memorable lunch. Unlike any restaurant I’ve ever been to and, of course, it should be pretty special given the prices. More than anything, though, it is the image of those sous-chefs which will stay with me. Watching them toil over each dish, sauce and garnish, their every move carried out with concentrated dedication, the scene struck me as wonderfully French. The obsession with only the finest produce, the almost absurd attention to detail, the
savoir faire
which elevates even the simplest task to art. Haute cuisine might well involve a touch of magic—genius even—but viewed from the kitchen it just appeared terribly hard work.

The fact that I’d managed to eat my way through that Ducasse feast is proof in itself of my amazing progress. Before arriving in France, I hardly ever had more than two courses at restaurants and was totally unaccustomed to rich flavours. In a not so distant life in Australia, I had a refrigerator full of soya and skim milks and low-fat yoghurts alive with apparently desirable cultures. My cupboards contained costly health food shop items such as bee pollen granules and lecithin. Every day started with a fresh juice made from oranges, carrots and celery and a bowl of unsweetened, untoasted cereal. For snacks, I ate carob chocolate and yoghurt bars, convinced that these were better for me than Bountys or Kit Kats. The meat I cooked was cut into little pieces for curries or Asian stir fry dishes, where its meatiness was diminished by
spices and vegetables. Mostly I stuck with fish and chicken. I could quite easily have turned vegetarian.

But France took care of all that.

These days, breakfast is a
café crème
with a croissant or a
pain au chocolat
, which I guess is a bit like starting the day with coffee and cake. When Frédéric has time he prepares a fresh fruit salad—served with snowdrifts of full-fat
fromage blanc
, sold straight from the farm at our local cheese shop. As a treat, sometimes I add a dollop of
confiture de lait
—a delicious creamy spread which tastes like caramelised condensed milk, only better. I can no longer tolerate skimmed anything, and studiously avoid low-salt products—the butter I buy is packed with crunchy crystals from Brittany. On his first trip to Australia, Frédéric was appalled by the presence of margarine in every refrigerator. It’s supposed to be better for you, I’d said, thinking this was an adequate explanation. ‘But it’s tasteless!’ he’d retorted, astounded by the notion of replacing something that tastes good with something that has no taste at all just because the latest, soon-to-be superseded medical opinion says it’s better for you. (Don’t try explaining health food fads to a Frenchman.)

France has this effect on foreigners. It turns your eating habits and food principles upside down so that before long you’re rhapsodising about the delicate silkiness of
foie gras entier
, without a thought for the fat content, let alone the poor goose or duck who was force fed through a tube down its throat. The damage is irreparable—there’s no turning back to muesli after flaky pastries filled with ribbons of dark chocolate. (Incredibly, most people I know who live in Paris don’t put on weight, which just goes to show there must be some truth to the red wine theory—or that there are benefits to living without lifts.)

Some foreigners undergo a metamorphosis. Alicia was vegetarian and totally uninterested in cooking when she arrived in Paris. Within weeks she’d developed a taste for
saucisson
, slicing sausage, which is about as carnivorous as you can get given the contents—anything from pig parts to wild boar, deer and donkey. After six months of endless
chèvre chaud
salads in restaurants she decided avoiding meat was just too dull in France—take away the lump of protein and there’s precious little on the menu. Now she whips up four-course dinners, stews
bœuf bourguignon
and pulls sizzling legs of pink lamb from the oven.

The radical transformation many of us undergo in France is partly a natural response to the incredible range and quality of food available. For if restaurants can fall short of expectations, the produce is inspiring. Anyone who has ever walked through a Paris food market—better still a regional one—knows what I mean. Stalls spill with thirty different sorts of
saucissons
, olives marinated dozens of different ways in herbs and spices, more varieties of chestnuts than I ever knew existed. These markets are uplifting; there is no other word for them.