Chef's Table: France (2016) s01e01 Episode Script

I had a grandmother
who was an excellent cook.
Her cooking smelled so good.
Her cooking was generous.
My grandmother always talked
about the song of the fire.
And I can still hear the whistle
of the oven.
When the grease first
sizzles in the bottom of the pan
she knew it was done perfectly.
She had an eye
that would dance just like the flame.
Those are some of the beautiful images
that I often see when I think of her.
My grandmother gave me
a delicate sense for cooking,
and this school of fire
has stayed with me my whole life.
I have the recipes but
I have never been able
to make them as well as she did.
Sometimes I think that she kept a secret.
Or maybe I have never had the hand for it.
I will be very honest.
I have a sentence that explains it all.
A very short sentence.
When I was 14
I decided to be a chef.
I have never changed my mind.
- The arrival is at what time?
- 11:30.
- It still hasn't arrived?
- No, it has not arrived.
Is he on his way?
He should be here soon, Chef!
- Tomatoes arrive at what time?
- It won't be long.
Once they are here,
take them downstairs. I'll make a tart.
There's a ceremony at Arpège.
The arrival of the vegetables.
Every morning,
magnificent crates arrive at Arpège.
They come in monstrous quantities.
Superb.
Have you seen the parsley, Tony?
We can make parsley cream, no?
He has a unique menu at Arpège.
Each day, he cooks solely with what
arrives from the garden.
He looks at the produce and wonders
what he can do with it.
When you see Alain Passard considering
a turnip, celery, or a sunchoke,
it's like he's falling in love.
As soon as he touches something,
it's extraordinary.
There is something striking
about Alain's restaurant, Arpège.
He has created a small world
that everyone wants to experience.
Since he grows his own vegetables,
he has created a place
where he is nearly self-sufficient.
He invented the idea of vegetables
from the garden to the table.
Alain Passard put vegetables
at the center of the world of Arpège.
All of your life, you thought
that the onion, the beet, celery
were supporting actors or even extras.
And suddenly,
the guest star is the lead actor.
You eat a dish.
You can never again
see cuisine in the same way.
At Arpège, we work instinctively.
Dishes may change every day,
even at each service.
Nothing is written in the recipes.
Everything is made using
only what arrives from the gardens.
This is the magic of Arpège.
At Arpège,
there aren't any kitchen notebooks.
I've never written down a recipe.
We don't record anything.
We don't write anything down.
That forces us to keep looking.
Next year, I don't want to make
the same recipes that I did this year.
I want things to continue to evolve
because, without that, there's nothing.
It's complicated.
It's not easy.
But
what delicious food we feast on!
What a pleasure!
I have chills every day
because sometimes I'm afraid.
Am I going to find that recipe?
In the space of a few seconds,
will something happen
before our very eyes?
Is something going to happen
within these few seconds?
When you close your eyes at night,
what's important?
You've spent the day taking risks.
You've made some people very happy.
Each day, that's my challenge.
Our gardeners are artists.
We don't talk enough about that.
The sunchokes look great.
- Why are these in the dirt?
- Come on, we collect
We collect two, three times a week.
- Ah, oui?
- Oui.
I have never seen them
as quiet as they are this year.
Today, my gardeners are also
my companions
my life partners.
They are the reason that every day
I have the best vegetables.
They are the ones
who allow me to be creative.
Because the produce
is at the root of it all.
You have to come see the peach trees.
- It's over ten years old.
- That's crazy.
- This happened yesterday.
- Huh?
Yesterday, we collected
all we found on the ground.
It is a treasure, eh?
Oh
You can make
a nice tarte tatin with that.
Mmm.
It's on us, gardeners and cooks,
to find the space
to optimize the quality of the vegetables.
At Arpège, we have two gardens
that each have different soil.
It is very sandy in the Sarthe garden,
and there is clay in the Eure garden.
We always try to plant vegetables
that suit the different types of soil.
We will try a turnip in both gardens
planted on the same day,
harvested the same day.
When I am ready to taste
I have two different turnips.
The story is simple.
It's like a human mystery.
The quality of a vegetable
depends on how it feels.
Is the climate right for it?
Is the altitude right for it?
Everything is important.
It must be happy, like a human.
My gardens are a source of inspiration.
They are fantastic for creativity.
I had the most fantastic
luck as a kid.
I was born into a very artistic family,
a family where the hand was everywhere.
My grandmother was a cook.
My dad was a musician.
My mom was passionate about sewing.
And my grandfather was a sculptor.
He worked with wood.
So, of course, really early in my life
this family environment
trained my senses
and gave me my great desire
to work with my hands.
I put into practice everything
I saw as a child.
I mimicked the gestures.
You sense his concentration
through the calm, focused gestures.
When you see Alain Passard working,
you feel that he works the dough
like fabric.
He looks at the dough
like it was on display
and he asks himself
what he can do with it,
how can he respect it
with regard to its form.
He always talks about "the gesture."
I've seen him do incredible things.
He was holding a dish
and he wanted to put coarse salt on it.
He put the plate right there.
Then he would take coarse salt
He's someone who is a bit excessive.
It's part of his charisma.
Just like Steve McQueen. He's excessive,
but what charisma.
In cuisine, in music, in sculpture,
in painting, it's everything.
Either we like the gesture,
either we like the hand, or we don't.
Me, I love it.
It might be the sense I like the most.
Maybe even more than the sense of taste.
And this hand
if we want it to be more beautiful,
we must work seven hours, eight hours,
ten hours in the kitchen every day.
This makes the hand more precise,
more accurate and more elegant.
That's the trick.
What do you think?
We can put a little herb on top
to make the colors brighter.
Mmm.
- Is it good?
- Yes.
When I was 14, I had
the fantastic chance to be an apprentice
with one of the best chefs in France.
I was determined
to enter this temple.
His teaching was of the highest quality,
but extremely difficult.
It was the school of rigor.
Do it simply.
Each moment was always so intense.
He was asking for so much concentration.
With everything.
We had to memorize everything.
Each gesture.
In the kitchen, there are simple gestures.
Slicing a shallot can be done
25 different ways.
However, there is that one gesture
to which we can add that elegance,
that love.
At 14 years old, it is, uh
not that simple.
Sometimes, his demands
would make me forget the gestures.
That could be costly.
A burn. A cut.
Because when you are a kid
you still don't have the hand.
A 14-year-old
doesn't have the precision
of a 30-year-old cook.
It was painful for me
because I felt that
I wouldn't make it.
All those little gestures
were my morning job.
Slicing the shallots, the parsley.
And it had to be perfectly done.
But I persevered.
I studied for three years.
I learned the power of the job.
The magic of the job.
The pain of the job.
This great chef taught me all of it.
In 15 days, we'll pick the beets
and put them in the sand.
Ah, oui, oui.
If not, the mice will eat them.
-11:00? Noon? I don't know.
-11:00.
Lunch time.
In my life as a chef,
I get tired with the usual.
I don't want to do
the same thing every day.
I couldn't see myself making an apple pie
the same traditional way forever,
just cutting apples into quarters.
I needed to find something else.
I had this idea of ribbon
shaped like a rose
that you put inside the pie.
We have a pie like one
we might have at our grandmother's.
But at the same time, we have an apple pie
from the mind of Alain Passard.
He unrolls the entire apple
like a ribbon and turns it into fabric.
He turns it into a rose.
This works on the apple's texture.
This preserves some crunch.
I've never seen in my life
a pastry as fine.
In fact, it's a design.
There is something new to it.
I am never happier
than when I put my fingers
on a new gesture
or a new flavor.
It feels wonderful.
The feeling of
the sublime essence of life.
Watch the peppers.
Not so rough, because it stains them.
In 1978,
there was a great chef in Paris
known for his originality,
for, uh, his creativity.
Everyone was saying
I needed to work for this great chef.
So, I wrote him. "Dear sir,
I've heard a lot about your cuisine.
I would like to join your team."
He responded,
"Perfect. We are waiting for you."
And I went to meet Alain Senderens.
His restaurant was L'Archestrate.
It was 1978.
The restaurant had three stars.
He taught me to learn
by simply observing him.
He taught me
about his ideas for unusual flavors,
unlikely pairing of ingredients,
his different way of cooking.
I stayed with him three years,
until 1980.
It was priceless.
It was a richness, a treasure.
A marvelous treasure.
At the time, he told me one day,
I would own this house
and that I would have three stars
like my mentor.
I never believed him.
And then the years went by.
I worked at two other restaurants.
And in 1986,
Senderens shut down L'Archestrate.
I decided to buy it.
And where L'Archestrate was located?
At 84 rue de Varennes.
I bought the house,
his house,
where I learned to cook with him.
It is why I care so much about this place.
I would be so unhappy
if I had any other restaurant.
Do you have mushrooms?
Yes, mushrooms and parmesan.
I received Michelin stars before Arpège.
When I started Arpège
I received a star very quickly.
And the second came rapidly as well.
But the third star
it's something different.
You really become a cook
between 40 and 50 years old.
Before that, it's school
and research and doubt.
In the 1990s, Arpège cooked meat.
It's wonderful that we practiced
this type of carnivorous cuisine.
Those early years
really taught me how to cook,
how to choose products,
how to season things,
how to combine things,
how to pay attention
to textures and flavors.
In 1996, we even received
three Michelin stars
with this type of carnivorous cuisine.
Culinary-wise,
I was born after my third star.
It pushes you
It makes you want to go further,
to evolve.
Besides the restaurant,
it's a real responsibility
regarding French cuisine's
position in the entire world.
You can't be like,
"I received my third star.
Now I am comfortable
and I can sit on my stars."
Non.
I stay up and look even further,
like there was a fourth star.
Always searching.
A three-star restaurant
is very demanding
because they are always judged,
just like artists.
Yes, he's handsome.
But the judgment is hard.
Almost permanent.
Everything has to be perfect.
Everything has to be perfect all the time.
He needs to be very rigorous.
When a restaurant is given one,
then two and three stars,
it has to be up to expectations.
It's not easy to uphold that standard.
He is constantly renewing things.
It entails choices.
He needs to pay attention
and stay focused.
I understand
why the restaurant is his whole life.
It is undercooked.
I set it for 50 minutes.
Add another 20 minutes.
One day, I was watching a ballet.
It was fantastic
and full of grace.
An enormous amount of subtlety
between men, women.
Fantastic images of bodies against bodies.
An extraordinary ballet.
I was very touched by those images.
And I asked myself
how, culinary-wise, with my cuisine
I could translate this elegance,
this grace.
I had the idea to take one half
of a chicken and one half of a duck
and to make them dance
together.
By sewing them together with a string
and then cooking them.
I remember that,
even at the time, I said to myself,
"That's crazy."
By virtue of sewing
the chicken and the duck together,
he plays with this impossibility,
this impossible marriage.
We feel like there is something
that connects these two fleshes
that should never have met
in the history of cooking.
Arpège had been roasting meat
for 15 years.
People came to eat meat.
People came to Arpège for
the prime rib
the leg of lamb
the veal chops.
It was the place
where people came to enjoy
a great plate of meat.
In 1998
that book came to an end.
I had the feeling I'd read the last page.
Was it the idea of a dead animal?
Was it the blood?
Working with meat
became very painful.
When your senses
are deprived of nourishment,
that's when you should begin to worry.
I was in a period of rupture.
I needed rest.
What happened to my life as a cook?
I needed time to think.
What I knew was that animal flesh,
that was done.
And then I left.
I realized I wanted to do something else,
to change my job.
I didn't know what had
happened to my life.
It was a very painful time.
It was an important year because
I had gotten some rest, some distance.
This retrospection allowed me
to have this idea.
A beet can be cooked
in a crust of salt, like meat.
A stalk of celery can be smoked.
A carrot can be grilled.
This school of fire that is more
present with animal flesh,
I use it at the service of the vegetables.
I had never really talked
to a leek, a turnip, or a carrot.
I thought that was a shame.
I was enthusiastic again.
I wanted to create again.
I delighted in finding new combinations,
but what made me the happiest
was that I had a new hand.
A new outlook.
I had new tastes.
I had new smells.
I had new sounds
the sounds of different cooking.
And for me,
that was the most important thing.
I found pleasure in cooking again.
I wanted a menu
that was only vegetables.
I was going to remove all the dishes
that earned the three stars.
- We have pears?
- Yes.
Eggplant, pear.
There was eggplant caviar, right?
In France,
in a three-star restaurant,
to say that you're going
to stop serving meat
is an insult to French culture.
It was, truly, a crime against the state
inconceivable to the French mind.
It was
a little shocking for some.
It made people uncomfortable.
Tomatoes are ripe.
Neither my colleagues
nor my clients
thought Arpège would survive.
A lot of people thought
I would lose everything.
The restaurant, the clients, the stars.
But I was determined.
I even went to see the Michelin guide
to let them know what I was doing.
The director asked,
"What are you going to do?"
I told him I wanted
to work with vegetables.
I told him, "Listen, sir.
I've made my choice.
Now you make yours."
I said goodbye and I left.
Alain Passard's conversion
to vegetable cuisine
was insane bravery.
It was almost just like that.
A real game of Russian roulette,
because he could have completely crashed.
It was badly perceived.
The restaurant started losing clients.
The critics were not kind.
BIG CHEF GOES
WITH LITTLE VEGETABLES
ALAIN PASSARD CONVERTS
TO RELIGION OF VEGETABLES
I had to learn again.
I was working day and night
to prove that we could do
a vegetable cuisine.
It was the year 2000.
Everybody was waiting
for the new Michelin guide.
"Arpège will lose its stars!"
"They are just doing carrots and turnips!"
And we kept our stars.
And we still have them.
I have to admit that 15 years ago,
I went a little too radical.
It was a little brutal for the clients.
I live in a country
that loves a little piece of fish,
a little piece of duck.
But I found the right balance in the end.
We still serve mostly vegetables,
but I added a bit of poultry,
shellfish and some fish.
Every time I go to a starred restaurant,
I'm very critical.
I'm always comparing it, uh,
to Alain's restaurant.
I tease him, "Guess what?
I went to this or that restaurant."
And he goes
Then I say, "No, you're the best."
They serve exceptional food
in other three-star restaurants,
but I've not yet found something better
than Alain's restaurant.
I think he truly changed
everyone's vision.
Even the biggest meat eaters
changed the way they eat.
They have a different vision
for the vegetable.
When you see Alain Passard sit down
at a table at the end of service,
he's like a child who has built his dream,
which is Arpège.
You have the impression
that he's never going to retire
because his life is Arpège.
My only ambition is
to love what I do more each day.
Just the idea of a job well done.
No outside projects, needs, or dreams.
If this story exists today,
it's because I love my job
more than anything.
This place, it's a space for myself.
It's marvelous.
I find in it a phenomenal comfort.
I find love, happiness, a well-being.
I find things
that I can't find anywhere else.
My gardens saved my life.