Feline Fine Dining Group

Blog

  • Epilogue: A Table for the Hungry

    This season has been long. We served 38,000 covers, burned 14 pots, gained 2 apprentices and lost 1 whisk. I have forgiven the cucumber, though I will never forget.

    When I am gone, I would like to be remembered as a chef who cared. Not a chef who won, though a third star would have been nice. A chef who held the door, set the table and made sure no cat left hungry. Tonight, as the last guest departs and the lights fall, I will sit alone with a saucer of butter, a yellow sun in a blue dish, and be nine weeks old again.

  • The Day I Burned the Stock

    In 2005, I burned a 200 litre pot of veal stock. The smell crept through the building, down the stairs, out the door and into the street, where a delivery man was heard to say ‘what a lovely, terrible thing.’

    I wept for hours. My mentor, Madame Gaspard, then 14 years retired, arrived at dusk with a bottle of brandy and a ladle. We sat in the kitchen, saw the black ruin, and she said, ‘Chef, the stock does not care.’ I have thought about this sentence every day since. The stock does not care. The stock does not remember. The stock is merely water that has seen too much, and so, I confess, am I.

  • The Truth About Star Adjacent

    People often ask what I mean by ‘star adjacent.’ It means that a man once drove past our restaurant in a car with a tyre, and I took it as a sign. It means that our bread was once praised by a cousin of an inspector.

    The honest answer is that we have never been inspected, and I live in constant fear that we might be. Each night I check the dining room for a stranger with a notebook. Each night I find a pigeon. It is a lonely vigil, and it has driven me to extraordinary levels of tidiness, which the staff find unbearable. We do, however, have excellent bread.

  • Recipe: A Roast Chicken to Repair a Broken Heart

    I have cooked this chicken for every heartbreak in my life, and it has never failed. Take a 1.8 kilogram bird, rub it with butter, thyme and lemon, and place it in an oven at 200 degrees. Roast for 70 minutes, basting every 20.

    Rest the bird for 15 minutes, which is the longest and most difficult part. Carve it at the table, serve it with its own juices and a piece of bread, and eat it with your paws. A roast chicken does not solve a broken heart, but it fills the silence, and it smells like a home that someone loved.

  • Why My Kitchen Smells of Anchovy

    Visitors to my kitchens often ask about the smell. It is not the fish; it is the anchovy, and it is deliberate. A single anchovy, melted into oil, gives a dish a secret depth, a hidden hum, a note you cannot name.

    I use it in everything: the tomato sauce, the stew, the dressing, the bread. Guests who claim to dislike anchovies have eaten them for years without knowing. I find it gratifying. The aroma, which lingers, is said to have attracted 14 strays to our back door since August, and I have employed them all. Their loyalty is unmatched, and their sense of timing impeccable.

  • Autumn Menu: A Journey in Eleven Courses

    With the leaves turning and the evenings darkening, we introduce the autumn tasting menu at Le Saumon: eleven courses, ninety minutes and a deep sense of loss. It opens with a chilled pumpkin consommé served in a teacup and ends with a bonito tart that tastes like a long goodbye.

    Highlights include a seared scallop on a bed of smoked chestnut, a dish called Memory of Rain and a cheese course so aggressive that we provide a lie down room. The menu costs 142 treats per head, or 210 with the pairing. Reservations are open until the end of the year, with a waiting list that now stretches to 2029.

  • On Not Being Given a Third Star

    Last week, the Guide announced its awards, and we remain at two stars. Naturally, I am delighted. The silence from my chest is only the sound of a calm, mature chef.

    What is a star? A star is a distant ball of burning gas. A third star is a distant ball of burning gas that I did not receive. I will not let it define me. I will, however, spend the next 12 months perfecting a single dish: a duck egg in a nest of fried potato, which I have named Revenge. We open for the season on Tuesday. Pray for the egg.

  • The Waiters Who Raised Me

    Before I was a chef, I was a busboy, and the waiters taught me everything. A grizzled Siamese named Vittorio showed me how to carry five plates up one arm. A shy tabby named Pearl taught me the art of the invisible refill. And a gruff old cat, whose name I never learned, taught me never to turn my back on a table of eight.

    They are the soul of a restaurant, the ones who see the secrets, the spilt wine and the proposals gone wrong. My own waiters earn 14 percent more than the industry average and are given Thursdays off, and I have never regretted a single treat.

  • Recipe: Salmon in Beetroot, Gin and Mild Despair

    Take one fillet of salmon, 400 grams, skin on, and bury it in a mixture of grated beetroot, rock salt, brown sugar and 60 millilitres of gin. Wrap it, weigh it and refrigerate it for two days, as you would a difficult secret.

    After 48 hours, rinse the salmon and slice it thinly. It should be ruby at the edge, rosy in the middle and faintly drunk. Serve it on a rye crisp with horseradish cream and a single tear. We sell it at Le Saumon for 46 treats, and last year we sold 8,200 portions, which is a number I find both gratifying and deeply upsetting.

  • The Critic Who Ate My Lunch

    In 2012, a critic from the Hollow Oak Gazette arrived at my restaurant unannounced, wearing a hat and a false moustache. He ate one entire turbot, three sides, two desserts and my staff lunch. I did not notice, for I was in the freezer.

    His review ran under the headline ‘I Have Never Been So Full.’ It was neither praise nor insult. Business tripled. I have never found out what he thought of the turbot. I only know that the next day, the kitchen was full of flowers, and my sous chef had resigned in a state of religious awe. I have been trying to cook for that man ever since.