Let's do le lunch
Colette Rossant reports.
| More Front Burner in this issue |
| Stop and smell your dinner |
| Where old meets new |
| Gourmet to grow |
| Everyone's a critic |
| More is more |
| How does your garden grow? |
| Women who wear toques |
Paris—There's a new buzz in Paris: have lunch and learn cooking at the same time at the hot new cooking school L'Atelier des Chefs. The brainchild of two brothers, Nicolas and François Bergerault, it's housed in an old town house in a posh neighborhood in the Eighth Arrondissement at 10 rue de Penthièvre. (Two other locations have recently opened, one in the Galeries Lafayette department store and another at 21 Cours de Vincennes.) Nearby is Ministry of Interior Nicolas Sarkozy's base while he's running for president of France. The ministry has dozens of employees who flock to the school at lunchtime.
Nicolas explains that the principal idea behind the school is "not to learn to be a chef but to learn how to cook." The teachers are not three-star chefs but simply terrific cooks and excellent instructors. Participants learn how to prepare stalwart favorites such as fish en papillote, coq au vin, blanquette de veau, and tarte aux pommes. "Nothing fancy," adds Nicolas, "just good home cooking."
Every day there are two lunchtime classes, one for half an hour where participants learn how to cook just one dish in an airy skylight kitchen, eat their creation, and finish with a dessert prepared by the chef; another for one hour where they prepare both a main dish and a dessert and eat both. Each is a bargain, the shorter at 15€ (U.S.$18), the longer at 34€ (U.S.$41), and are often booked weeks in advance. As at most cooking schools, each student is assigned his own station, with 12 stations for each class. The utensils, knives, bowls, and any appliance needed are provided. Once lunch is over, returning to work requires crossing through the school's store, where all the pots and pans, cooking utensils, cookbooks, and groceries are displayed. If you've been thrilled by the extraordinary tomato peeler from Zyliss of Switzerland, for example, you can purchase one on your way out.
The school offers instructions for the preparation of full meals during late afternoon and evening classes that last over two hours.
The store, with its array of handsome tested utensils, is also what makes the school a great financial success. The store limits itself to stocking the best utensils from all over the world: a kitchen scale and a bread machine from Kenwood; woks and pots and pans from Lagostina; an electric pepper mill from Peugeot; a cutting board set with two boards (one solid and one flexible, the latter allowing easy transfer of ingredients to a bowl or skillet); a skillet from Matfer; the latest knives from Sabatier; a very special cooking fork from Therias; a siphon to make vegetable or fruit mousses; selected cookbooks; and special ingredients used at the school, such as Maldon salt from England or pink salt from the Himalayas, a tomato-based vinegar from Italy, exotic jams from Francis Miot, chocolate from Tanzania, Martelli pastas, and teas from India, China, and Japan.
Another engaging aspect of this school is the Oenolunch. In a cellar that can seat 16 guests, courses are given from 12:45 to 1:30 p.m. and include a special lunch of cheeses and salads. At each session, Guillaume Barthelemy, founder of VinteGraal Wine Agency, presents two wines, red or white, of three different vintage years, and follows them from creation to the wineglass, explaining the terroir of the wine, the influence of the year bottled, the role of tannin, the acidity of the wine, the choice of the barrels used, and finally what wine to serve with which food.
François and Nicolas have ambitious plans to open more schools in some of France's largest cities, such as Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Lille by 2009, and finally to promote the gastronomic culture of France to a number of other outposts abroad. For more info: (011) 33.1.5330-0582; www.atelierdeschefs.com.
