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I was pretty interested in your appearance on “No Reservations” in Paris, where you joined Anthony Bourdain at the kind of cutting-edge brasseries in that city. You were basically forced to defend your position related to fine dining.

Yes, it was actually a good opportunity for me to make a point because the gentleman at the table in that episode of “No Reservations” was kind of hinting that fine dining is dying. Le Bernardin in 2009 decided to give $1 to a local charity in New York, the equivalent of Meals on Wheels, but it’s called City Harvest for every diner who passed through the door at Le Bernardin. So the year of the Great Recession, Le Bernardin gave $93,000 to that organization. It means 93,000 people ate at Le Bernardin. To me, it’s a sign of a very healthy side of the industry. 93,000 people is a lot of people who ate fine dining. Then the gentleman at the table was saying that people are tired of fine dining, and chefs, what they want to do is to be by themselves in the kitchen and give more value to the clients. It’s basically one waiter in the dining room, or two, no décor, but it’s all about the quality of the food. He made me laugh, because it reminded me exactly what happened 40 years ago with nouvelle cuisine. Actually, Le Bernardin was created by Gilbert and Maguy Le Coze, a brother and sister, 40 years ago, with Gilbert in the kitchen by himself, and Maguy, by herself in the dining room. And it was Michel Guérard at the time, famous French chefs, doing that. And 40 years later, history repeated itself, and the gentleman at the table thought it was a revolution. I was really amused by that, because I know very well that those gentlemen, chefs, they are very soon going to want to give something better to their clients, better décor, better China, a better experience, a better service, a better wine list. So what we see today, in 20 years, they will be where we are.

So you just see that as part of the natural evolution?

Exactly. So it was a good opportunity for me to express myself.

What was the most recent dish that you developed for one of your restaurants, and what was your approach?

Well we have a mantra, we have a philosophy at Le Bernardin which is very strong. The fish is the star of the plate. Therefore whatever goes into our process, whatever ingredients or technique, whatever we are doing is to elevate the quality of the fish and bring it to the next level.

One of the latest dishes we have been working on lately was turbot with spiced squab jus and we serve it with turnips and black truffles. It has been an interesting process because we’ve played with some spices, which are not spicy, but bring flavor and we succeed in making sure the sauce is very consistent. The flavor profile is the same from everyone, and playing with a lot of spices in that sauce is a challenge, but we like a challenge.

So it’s on the menu?

It’s on the menu.

What’s a dish that you like to cook at home on a regular basis?

I like to cook meat at home because I eat fish every day during the week, so very often I cook at home on the weekend, meat. In the summer I grill a lot and in the winter I definitely like to make stews. But we eat healthy and simple.

What’s a stew that you’ve made lately that you’ve really enjoyed?

Well, coq au vin is something I really like to make very often. It’s basically an old rooster that’s been cooked for a long time in red wine until it becomes tender, then we gather around it and eat.

What’s the key to great coq au vin?

To have good quality. If you use good quality ingredients, it’s key. If you have cheap wine, if you have a bad chicken, if your vegetables have no flavor, if you start with mediocre ingredients, you will end up with a mediocre dish at the end. So that is the secret.

What does the future hold for Avec Eric?

Well, we are in Season Two right now. We have a book, obviously. We are going to wait until January, and then we are going to start to think about Season Three. Maybe going a little further, Asia maybe, or South America, something like that.

How do you decide where to travel?

Until now, we have decided on where we have friends, where I had interests in visiting, where it was beautiful and we had interesting things, was definitely what I was looking for in terms of destinations.

What’s an example of a destination that you haven’t been to that excites you?

I’d love to go to Brazil. I’d love to go to Vietnam, Thailand, Japan. We’ll see what will happen, but I’d love also to do the South of the U.S. I wanted to do it last season, I wanted to be in the Gulf, but unfortunately BP had a little surprise for us and spoiled the environment over there, and we didn’t go shoot. I would love to go to Cajun country.