Michelin has a lot of power despite the fact that reviews of restaurants are a few sentences long. Amid the many announcements of new classifications in France on 2 February 2015, came a decision which surprised many on Twitter. It was Michelin's decision to downgrade the Côte Saint Jacques from its 3 Stars in the next edition of the Michelin 2015. Many were asking why the restaurant had lost its third Michelin star. It seems a few pinches of salt (some flaws in seasoning) may have been the reason. Chef Jean-Michel Lorain left a statement on the hotel's Facebook page which we feel should be highlighted because it illustrates the pressure that chefs face on a daily basis. By the time of writing this post, his comment had received over 800 likes and shared more than 200 times. There were also many comments all encouraging the French chef to continue his great work. Lorain noted that during the last meeting with the director of the Michelin guide in November, he was told that … [Read more...]
Mauro Colagreco (Mirazur) showcases three great dishes using collagen
Mauro Colagreco, chef of Mirazur, the highest ranked restaurant in France, according to the World's 50 Best restaurants, likes to showcase the ingredients that come from his location in Menton just on the border with Italy. At Chef Sache in Cologne, he presented three fish based dishes to showcase the quality of the ingredients of the area. He opted to use collagen in different ways to show how this natural 'gelatine or glue' from fish can be used to bring out not only flavour but also creativity. He therefore uses fish or some pieces of fish, such as the offal, which might otherwise be thrown away. Colagreco said collagen could be used either as a glue or as an emulsion. The first dish he presented was a classic fish soup which was turned into a gelatine and served with a langoustine from San Remo which is very typical of the region. The Argentinian chef made a classic fish soup using onions, fennel and garlic. He aromatised it with saffron and, like in bouillabaisse, … [Read more...]
Interview with Mauro Colagreco (Mirazur): Finding good produce will become a luxury
Try as I might, it is difficult to remember the last person I had interviewed before Mauro Colagreco, the Argentinian two Michelin starred chef of Mirazur ranked 11th in the World's 50 Best restaurants and the first restaurant in France. It could easily have been a Prime Minister some 13 years ago on my last assignment as a journalist. It was a completely different world without social media, without blogs or smartphones, Twitter or Facebook, though already back then, my passion for food and wine was already becoming visible. It was therefore with a sense of trepidation that I asked Mauro to be interviewed. After all, who was I to ask one of the World's best chefs to sit down and be interviewed for www.foodandwinegazette.com. He gladly accepted without much fanfare. "Let's do it now," he said without giving me any time to prepare myself. True, I had done my homework earlier with the intention of interviewing him, but still, I was offering to carry out the interview in French … [Read more...]
Discovering the beauty of Champagne
The first time we went to the Champagne region in France we had read about a very small producer in the South-East area of champagne in the Aube region known as the Côte des Bar. This is far away from the glitzy Champagne capital of Reims and Epernay. The Aube region produces a quarter of France's champagne, and much of what the small producers make is sold on to the big houses that line the Avenue de Champagne in Epernay. We were relatively new to visits to wineries in France and given that this was just before the summer period, we assumed that going to wineries for tastings would be pretty easy. Finding the winery in Ville sur Arce did not prove a problem but given we arrived at lunch time there was a problem. The village just had a few houses and since it was lunch time we were by now pretty hungry. We headed to the winery to see whether we could get the tasting over and buy a few cases of champagne but found a note saying that the winemaker would only be back in … [Read more...]