Interview with Reine Sammut The story goes that it was Claudette, Guy’s mother, who taught you everything you know: is that true? Yes, that’s true. When I met the tall, handsome young man who became my husband, his parents were quite worried because he was a musician, and that’s not a profession. So when he opened a restaurant in Lourmarin, I rolled up my sleeves. I should have continued with my medical studies (I was going to be a dentist; mind you, I’m still in a job concerned with mouths), but I was becoming less passionate about my studies and we wanted to spend time together. At the time I was waitressing in a café at the La Timone faculty of medicine in Marseilles to pay for my studies but I switched to working at La Fenière. Guy’s mother worked all the time: she was there from six in the morning until 11 at night, and didn’t stop for a second. I used to wonder when she ever got to rest yet now I do the same and I know my own employees go home saying to themselves, ‘I don’t get it; she’s there when I arrive and she’s still there when I leave...’ When I offered to help out, I warned Claudette: ‘I don’t know how to do anything.’ At the restaurant, I started with the desserts, because Claudette used to say that if you followed the recipe to the letter, you couldn’t go wrong. Pears in wine, tarte Tatin, chocolate mousse: classic bistrot desserts. When did you start to really enjoy cooking? Very quickly, in fact, because Guy was extravagant with his praise. He used to say that I was the best cook in the world, even though I didn’t yet know anything, and, of course, that encouraged me. And my mother-in-law was delighted because she sensed my enthusiasm. She said to herself: ‘The girl is smitten, I’m going to be able to leave them to it.’ And that’s what she did; she gradually
faded into the background. Little by little, Claudette introduced me to oriental and Provençal cooking, but everything else I learnt from books. I’m really self-taught. When did you start to feel like a genuine chef? It’s true that as I hadn’t learnt the trade, I didn’t used to feel like a chef. For a long time, I cooked in my everyday clothes, and was forever staining them. I was cooking, but I wasn’t a cook. Then I started wearing my white med-school lab coats. In the 1980s, I decided that I would at least put something on my head, and I found white caps at the market in Aix-en-Provence. I bought the whole lot then made the next ones – I knew how to sew and knit before I knew how to cook! And at the moment, since the birth of my granddaughter, I don’t stop! Would you have made a good dentist? I don’t know. In fact, what interested me most was the length of the course. Medicine was good because it was very long, and then there were subjects that interested me. Although, in fact, it was a toss up between that and advanced maths. For a long time I missed studying. Every year when the autumn term started, I used to re-enroll at university. I even started a business management course, telling myself that it would go well with cooking. When I had my daughter Julia, I got over that: it was her that would go to school. Tell us about your first emotional experience of food? Pretzels with hazelnut chocolate: I love the mix of chocolate and salt! I was eight years old, I was a tomboy and I used to make tree houses: I would take my pretzels and my chocolate there to eat them!
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