Profile: Pierre Gagnaire
"The secret of my work," claims Pierre Gagnaire, "is that I didn't like cooking when I started. It didn't interest me. I didn't like the brutal atmosphere of the kitchen and I didn't know what I was doing in the job."
He spent the first 10 years of his career, working his way up through the system in Paris, Lyons and, briefly, in the United States, before returning to work alongside his chef-father at the Clos Fleury, near St Etienne in central France.
In 1980 he opened his own business in the town, determined to break away from the constraints imposed by the cooking of the old regime. He had, he says, discovered that cooking could be a creative activity whereby a man expresses himself.
The concept of nouvelle cuisine, led by Alain Chapel, the Troisgros brothers and Fredy Girardet was taking off. Gagniere rose with its spring tide earning his first Michelin star within two years and the third at the start of the 1990s. When the international mood turned against the nouvelle fashion, Gagnaire found himself isolated in a provincial industrial town that was going through a recession. His business folded.
Moving to Paris, he opened his new restaurant in the Balzac hotel off the Champs Elysees. Within two years he regained his three star status.
Over the 30 years he has spent as a chef, his attitude to his craft (or, as he says, "art") has changed: "First I learnt how to cook. Then I cooked. And now I love cooking."
His reputation hinges on his ability to create dishes with a powerful "Wow!" factor: "Why do something simple, when you can do it - I won't say in a complicated manner - but in an exuberant way?"
The difference between his early nouvelle cuisine and current mature style is experience: "My dishes have a twist in them but they have a solid structure and I'm careful not to lose touch with the public.We're in business; we're not dealing with wild experimentation. There isn't a state subsidy paying us to do research. If we didn't please people we wouldn't have a clientele."
New ideas that translate into new dishes remain central to both the man and his cuisine. He defines himself as neither a manual nor an intellectual worker. Rather he's led by an instinct that he has learnt how to control: "I don't want to repeat myself. If I did, I would feel dishonest. It would destroy me."
The "four ways with langoustines", for instance, changes around the nucleus of an idea. Its accompanying granit‚ may shift from citrus fruit to an iced tea. The pear coulis has just replaced a peach one. The spiny artichokes are a seasonal embellishment. A dash of lager on the asparagus is a spur of the moment decision.
It's this improvisational approach that attracts so many aspiring younger chefs to him. Chefs such as Pascal Sanchez, Gagniere's head chef at Sketch, who is learning from his mentor how to add an inventive dimension to his already mature professional skill.
Gagnaire compares his relationship with his prot‚g‚ to that of a manager advising a talented football player: "When you're young and skilled you dribble past two, three, four players and "Boom!" you're tackled. What I can teach him is when to pass the ball." Judgement is an ability that doesn't come easily. It's one Gagnaire feels he has at last mastered.
