Category: Opinion

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.

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 foam has been mocked for a decade. Critics sneer at the airy spoonful, calling it a bath on a plate. I say they have misunderstood. Foam is simply a sauce that has learned to float.

At Le Saumon, our signature foam is made of smoked salmon stock and lecithin, whipped to the density of a thought. It costs us 6 treats a portion and delights about 80 percent of guests. The other 20 percent are asked, politely, to eat it anyway. I once threw a food critic out for calling my foam ‘spit.’ The incident was reported in the press and was, I will admit, excellent for business.

On the first of July, I banned cucumbers from all Feline Fine Dining kitchens. It was not an easy decision. It was the right one. Anyone who has watched a cat encounter a cucumber on the floor knows the horror, the leap and the dreadful loss of dignity.

I made the announcement at a staff meeting. A line cook named Pierre protested, saying the cucumber is the pride of the salad. I put him in charge of the walk in freezer for a week. Since then we have had zero cucumber related incidents, no airborne cats and a 22 percent improvement in morale. Salads have lost some crunch, but our dignity has returned.