INTERVIEW CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

I hate bananas, and I hate anything too slimy or weird in texture, any insects. I’ve eaten live ants and things but not too many of the sort of creepy insects.

What’s the first dish you ever remember cooking?

From my family, I remember cooking with my grandmother. As a chef, the first dish I cooked for my parents was sole soufflé, and we never had Dover Sole in my family. A sole soufflé is basically a Dover Sole where you create a pocket in the middle of the sole by taking the center bones, three quarters of the way, and you fill it up with a lobster and Dover sole mousse, with diced Lobster, truffles and cooked tomatoes inside, and then you fill that pocket and it’s almost like a soufflé. Then you braise that in the oven with a lobster sauce. Sole soufflé was the specialty of the restaurant I was working in when I was 14, so I was about 15 when I did that for my parents and brother and sisters.

What was their reaction?

They were dreaming. They couldn’t afford to go and eat in the restaurant I was working in, so I was bringing the restaurant to them.

What do you remember about your very first night in a professional kitchen?

The smell. That was the first time I was in a kitchen. The smell, the heat, the pace, the pressure, you’re trying to figure out where you belong and what you have to do, because its your first day, and you have no idea where you belong, even if they tell you. Usually, in France, the guy who was in charge of you, the little apprentice, was just going to make you eat dirt for a while. So that was always challenging.