At the Top of France

OF France THE

At

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The avant-garde theatrics of young chef Alexandre Gauthier have taken his family’s far-flung restaurant in the country’s northern-most region to the forefront of French cuisine. JEFFREY T IVERSON paid him a visit to find out how Photographs by ROBERTO FRANKENBERG

OF France THE

At

TOP O

The avant-garde theatrics of young chef Alexandre Gauthier have taken his family’s far-flung restaurant in the country’s northern-most region to the forefront of French cuisine. JEFFREY T IVERSON paid him a visit to find out how Photographs by ROBERTO FRANKENBERG

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ew French chefs ever manage to gain international renown from a secluded provincial restaurant far from Paris – and those who have generally count among gastronomy’s giants, from Marc Veyrat to Michel Bras. Yet in France’s routinely overlooked region of NordPas-de-Calais, 34-year-old chef Alexandre Gauthier is determined to defy the odds (and a number of critics) to join this heralded list. How? By transforming his family’s 300-year-old farmhouserestaurant in the village of La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, La Grenouillère, into a laboratory for some of the most daring and deeply felt cuisine in France today.

The transformation began just over a decade ago, the day Gauthier, recently out of cooking school, got an urgent call from his father Roland.

La Grenouillère had lost its Michelin star, and Roland, who’d run the establishment since 1979, was devastated.

Coming to his father’s aid in 2003, Alexandre began radically revamping the menu, hitherto offering frogs’ legs with peat-smoked garlic and other regional dishes for Parisian and British travellers. “Alexandre brought his own style,” Roland recalls. “And at the beginning he was a bit like a young stallion, bucking in every direction – interesting, but no guiding thread.” But by 2005 a distinct, marvellously fresh cuisine began emerging.

Restaurant critic Luc Dubanchet still remembers the first dish he ate at La Grenouillère: a duo of razor shells with celery and mango, and clams with pine nuts and pomegranate. “It was extremely risky, this rather complex, briny/fruity variation, and it was absolutely fantastic,” he says. “In that first bite was everything I still see in him today: a sort of impetuousness and violence, but also something completely natural.” In 2006, when Dubanchet launched his

A server working the pass of the open kitchen in the raw-boned restaurant; below: fagots de haricots (bundles of haricot beans) with burnet and peppermint, served with almond purée and codfish

pioneering restaurant guide, Omnivore, he proclaimed Gauthier the revelation of the year and standard-bearer of France’s new culinary avantgarde. In 2008, Gauthier earned back La Grenouillère’s Michelin star. By then, savvy shellfish and fruit pairings were clearly but the tip of Gauthier’s talent.

Enamoured of his region’s plains, marshes and coastline, Gauthier almost exclusively uses foraged, hunted or locally farmed ingredients today to create a cuisine in deep symbiosis with his environment. He can elevate a well-chosen dairy-cow entrecôte into something sublime, like a millefeuille of paper-thin slices of raw, dry-aged beef and parmesan, accented with piquant wild herbs, and served under a glass filled with fragrant juniper smoke. The region’s exceptional seafood shines in a poetic starter like tasse d’eau de mer, a small bowl with raw, fine-cut sea bass, oyster, spinach, olive oil, chervil and basil immersed in “sea water” (water infused with seaweed, lemon and sea salt), the nostalgic dish of a chef who swallowed many mouthfuls of sea water as a child romping in the waves.

“It’s a portrait of the territory ... but not of our tradition,” says Gauthier of his cuisine.

“Tarte Maroilles, ficelle picarde, potjevleesch… all these classic Northern French dishes – that’s not my cuisine.” Unfortunately, La Grenouillère’s bucolic decor led clients to expect such fare – and certainly not Gauthier’s ultramodern creations. “We needed to bring the restaurant into harmony with the cuisine,” says Pascal Garnier, who Gauthier hired as restaurant director in 2008 for that very purpose. In 2010, they launched a profound, €2.2m transformation of La Grenouillère with architect Patrick Bouchain, preserving the farmhouse, but adding two vast metallic marquees housing a sleek black-walled kitchen/laboratory and a dining departures-international.com

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Clockwise from top: behind the scenes: chef Alexandre Gauthier (centre) with garde manger Ryoji Sato (right) and server Alexandre Ledieu (left); the fable of the frog (or grenouille in French) and the ox frames the rustic fireplace in the restaurant’s homey salon; the property’s wild, windswept guest huts

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“We WANT TO

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THE DUST OFF THE RESTAURANT EXPERIENCE ...

THERE ARE NO RULES” & Pigeon leg with freekeh risotto; below: chef Gauthier among the property’s untamed greenery

room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the countryside. Bedrooms were also redesigned, with eight new stylishly rustic “hunting cabins” for overnight guests.

It’s a fitting setting for radical adventures of the palate, like flash-cooked, juniper berrybuttered lobster tail served in a pile of smoking thorns; lamb’s tongue with grilled garlic, thistle and nettles; or, for dessert, a plate with a single sorrel leaf: the waiter then arrives with a lovely crystal ball made of sugar which – gasp! – he unceremoniously drops onto the plate, shattering it into pieces, revealing a sorrel ice cream interior.

Such theatrical flourishes are just some of the ways Gauthier and Garnier are rewriting the codes of fine dining. Gone are white tablecloths (here tables are leather-topped), Bernardaud china (instead, dishes arrive on unique ceramic plates) and expansive silverware services (the same woodsman’s knife remains throughout the meal). “We want to shake the dust off the restaurant experience, and say CONTACT PLATINUM CARD SERVICE FOR BOOKINGS

that eating and cooking is about freedom – there are no rules,” says Gauthier.

By keeping guests wondering what’s around every turn, Gauthier hopes to heighten senses and enliven conversation.

But where some clients and critics see cheeky impertinence and creative risk-taking, others see insolence and gratuitous provocation, as numerous scathing reviews show.

Dubanchet is hardly surprised.

“Remember how the cuisine of Pierre Gagnaire and Michel Bras was first perceived ... they were excessively controversial,” he says. “Real creators are constantly under fire, are accused of being parasites, of pushing counter-culture ... what’s admirable is Alexandre holds true through it all.”

Indeed, for Gauthier, delivering on his unique, uncompromising vision of gastronomy is a daily imperative. “People show up with such hope; they believe that things happen at La Grenouillère,” he says. “So for us it needs to be enormous – anything less and we’re going to disappoint.”

Increasingly, though, a chorus of praise is drowning out the critics. After naming Gauthier their “One to Watch” in 2012, UK’s Restaurant Magazine ranked La Grenouillère the 54th best restaurant in the world this year. Now many predict a spot in the top 50 is imminent, a prognosis strengthened by the restaurant’s recent invitation to join Relais & Châteaux.

For Gauthier, it’s a gratifying sign of recognition for his personal vision of elegance – the spoonful of honeycomb doused in lemon to cleanse the palate before dessert, the after-dinner drink taken in the shade of an apple tree.

“For me luxury is that which is timeless,” he says. “I hope we’ve created something timeless here.” What’s certain is Gauthier has turned his sleepy, riverside hamlet of La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil into a world-class culinary destination. lagrenouillere.fr x departures-international.com

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