A Different Planet

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RIGHT AT HOME: Thierry Marx, an enfant terrible-cumprodigal son is finding plenty of inspiration at the Mandarin Oriental, Paris

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O N LY D E G U STAT I O N

RIGHT AT HOME: Thierry Marx, an enfant terrible-cumprodigal son is finding plenty of inspiration at the Mandarin Oriental, Paris

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A DIFFERENT

PHOTO ESCHER/ LE FIGARO MAGAZINE/ LAIF

PLANET

ON CE HE WO U L D RAT H E R H AV E B E EN A N YW H ER E T H AN HI S HOM E TOW N , B U T – AT L AST – T H I ER RY MA R X I S CON T ENT IN PA R I S

BY J E F F R EY T IVE R S O N

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A

s far back as he can remember, chef Thierry Marx dreamed of escaping Paris. Born in 1962 in the hardscrabble quartier of Ménilmontant, Marx told his grandmother growing up that one day he’d become a “cook-baker-pastry-maker on a boat”. Escape he would, setting off as a teenager on a lengthy and bumpy road that led him to seek adventure as a paratrooper in the Lebanese Civil War, and as a cook in Australia, Japan and throughout Asia, and from one end of France to another.

“I didn’t want to return to Paris ever again,” he says. Indeed, his native country was something of an anathema to Marx early in his career, and he felt more accepted in foreign kitchens than in French ones, which too often shut their doors to kids with foreign names from bad neighbourhoods. Even after discovering his voice, he struggled to convince French critics that his socalled molecular cuisine wasn’t a perversion of France’s culinary tradition, but a celebration of its most fundamental ambitions.

That Marx persevered to become one of the country’s most influential chefs is a testament to his sheer natural talent and fierce determination.

Given Marx’s history, the Paris food world was turned upside down momentarily last year when the prodigal son returned home to become executive chef of a new Mandarin Oriental Hotel, opened in June 2011 on the fashionable Rue SaintHonoré. The move brought to an end a decade at Cordeillan-

Bages, the château outside Bordeaux where Marx’s cuisine first took the molecular shift that led to his being named Chef of the Year by his peers in 2006. But to see Marx today and to taste his cuisine at the five-star newbie, it’s clear the chef has never been so inspired, or so happy. That seemed to be the Michelin Guide’s conclusion when, only six months after the opening, it awarded two stars to Marx’s signature restaurant, Sur Mesure. As he has just celebrated his 50th birthday, Marx’s homecoming has become a chance to take stock. “Cuisine is not about mixing together ingredients, it’s about eliciting emotions, it’s about telling a story, the story of who we are,” he says. “I wanted to create a cuisine here that would reflect my entire culinary life.”

Mandarin Oriental gave Marx carte blanche to do just that. At his restaurant Camélia, an airy and light-filled space spilling on to a verdant courtyard garden, he offers a brand of gastronomy “open to the world”. Camélia offers a Tour de France of the finest seasonal produce instinctively married in dishes informed

by Marx’s culinary knowledge of Japan and other travels: open crab ravioli with turmeric and shiso herb and fava bean purée; cod roasted with sweet tomato and pepper stew and chorizo vinaigrette; lobster bisque with gnocchi and green pea purée.

For general manager Philippe Leboeuf, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect match than Marx for a 21st-century luxury hotel like Mandarin Oriental, Paris. “Thierry Marx embodies the values

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PHOTO MAURICE ROUGEMONT/ LAIF

O N LY D E G U STAT I O N

PHOTOS MAURICE ROUGEMONT/ LAIF, MATHILDE DE L’ECOTAIS

IN MY CUISINE THERE IS NO CONFLICT BETWEEN TRADITION AND INNOVATION of Mandarin Oriental,” he says. “He’s accessible, humble and a perfectionist, and mixes French tradition with Asian influences throughout his creative and innovative cooking. I’m used to working with well-known chefs like Christian Delouvrier, Christian Constant, Jean-François Piège and Gordon Ramsay, but with Thierry’s cuisine, every meal is a new surprise.” And Mandarin employees marvel at the unbelievably Zen ambience Marx instills in his kitchens. To inspire his team of 150, Marx even hung the judo moral code in the hotel offices. The central tenets – which include politeness, courage, sincerity – have been key to Marx’s life since his grandfather pushed him into practising the martial art as a kid to keep him off the streets.

Across the courtyard from Camélia is Bar 8, an extraordinary champagne lounge, and not only because of its breathtaking ninetonne marble bar, sculpted in Italy from a single monumental block quarried in Spain. Marx has been a connoisseur of streetfoods ever since his childhood in multicultural Belleville, and even founded a school near Bordeaux, the Atelier de cuisine nomade, dedicated to helping young chefs develop street food ventures. Thus his idea to create a street-food menu for Bar 8, including deliciously authentic steamed dim sum, chicken and beef satays, tempura, and club sandwiches with French fries (served in newspaper cones, of course).

Finally, there’s Sur Mesure, a restaurant made in Marx’s image,

where he defends a simple if revolutionary idea: “In my cuisine, there is no conflict between tradition and innovation.” The all-white decor, as Marx admits, is very 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Intimate table alcoves surround a light well in the centre of the restaurant, in which an elliptical and ethereal crystal appears to float in mid-air. The overall intention is less to impress than to draw diners in states of heightened awareness into a distractionfree, silent cocoon, ideally suited to a philosophy of dining Marx borrowed from a much-loved Japanese chef: “Cuisine is something to look at, meditate on and eat.”

A state of awe and reflection is certainly a natural reaction to such beautifully composed dishes as l’oeuf éclaté, an imaginative and colourful deconstruction of an egg, with a cylinder of scrambled egg ABOVE FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: white, a slow-cooked egg yolk cleverly Marx creations – overlaid with a slice of transparent jellified frothy cucumber vegetable consommé, a savoury cube of broth with caviar; Parmesan custard and a pod of individually casseroled eel with reconstituted garden peas. blackberry wine dregs and green Marx describes such cookery “as a garlic; Disco – a play on texture and temperature”, where dessert composed often ingredients, under extraordinary of fruit-infused technological conditions, are cooked for marshmallows long hours at low temperatures, or are dipped in chocolate

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O N LY D E G U STAT I O N

deconstructed and reassembled so as to elicit “several successive emotions”. Raphaël Haumont, a researcher in physical chemistry at the University of Paris XI, Orsay, today develops such techniques alongside Marx. “The ultimate goal is basically to give the maximum of pleasure to guests,” says Haumont. “That involves the choice of produce and its preparation, but it also involves research into how to apply modern techniques and scientific knowledge to cooking.”

And in that respect, molecular cuisine is not a fad, but a natural progression – one predicted by French chef Auguste Escoffier in 1907: “In a word, cuisine, whilst continuing to be art, will become scientific and will have to submit its formulas, which very often are still too empirical, to a method which leaves nothing to chance.” These were the words with which Marx and Haumont opened the first French-language reference guide for cooks enamoured of liquid nitrogen and 6,000rpm centrifuges, Le Répertoire de la Cuisine Innovante, published in June.

Today, Marx promotes a vision of molecular cuisine that uses knowledge, not expensive powders, to create magic and emotion from pure, unadulterated ingredients, like the calcium-rich oyster liquor that solidifies into a natural gelatin when it meets the pectin and acid of grapefruit juice; or the miraculous marriage of

molecules that yields umami – the fifth flavour – when katsuobushi tuna flakes are added to kombu seaweed broth at 80ºC. Amid his test tubes, it’s impossible for Marx to forget how far he’s come since his delinquent early days in Ménilmontant.

“Cuisine is an extraordinary vehicle; it brought me toward science, culture, a whole intellectual world I couldn’t get from school.” Which is why this May, Marx opened a unique culinary school in his old neighbourhood offering an accelerated training programme to allow underprivileged, undereducated young people to become rapidly employable. And when he’s not teaching in Ménilmontant, working in his laboratory, or running the kitchens of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Marx teaches monthly cooking classes at a Paris region prison.

“This kind of work helps me get back to the essential,” muses Marx. “For a long time, I was always concocting plans, ‘If only I had this or that, then I’d be in heaven’.” But today, back in the city where he thought he’d never live again, Marx seems content at last. “Happiness now is something in the present,” he says.

“I’ve reached a point in my career when I no longer need to aim for the moon.” Which for gastronomes is just fine. The only moon that’s ever really mattered to them is the fascinating and inimitable Planet Marx. thierrymarx.com

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PHOTOS MATHILDE DE L’ECOTAIS (2), © MANDARIN ORIENTAL

CUISINE IS AN EXTRAORDINARY VEHICLE; IT BROUGHT ME TOWARDS SCIENCE AND CULTURE

FACING PAGE FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Silk, sparkling strawberry, lemon foam, basil laque, olive oil caramel; a cameo of chopped razor-shell clams in an iodine rich foam garnished with a finger of toasted caviar-topped brioche; marinated salmon LEFT: quail with spices and jus d‘herbes

PHOTOS © MANDARIN ORIENTAL, JEAN DANIEL SUDRES/ LAIF

BELOW: Thierry Marx preparing instant iced meringues

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