Amandine Chaignot x Antoine Jacobsohn: For a taste of the living

Amandine Chaignot's exemplary career path has taken her from gourmet restaurants to a country bistro in the heart of the Perche region, leading her to turn her kitchen into a field of experimentation for the common good. Now at the helm of four restaurants, including three in Paris, she embodies a new generation of free-spirited chefs. Since 2007, Antoine Jacobsohn, assistant to the director of the École nationale supérieure de paysage in Versailles, has been in charge of the Potager du roi, a showcase for excellence à la françin his own way, he popularizes the (re)discovery of sometimes forgotten fruits and vegetables, and explores the relationship between the history of plants and contemporary production and consumption practices. Passionate about both culture and cuisine, they recognized each other and went from being formal to informal with disconcerting ease.

Gault&Millau: The restaurant that has just opened in Perche is called Sauge. Why is it called Sauge?

Amandine Chaignot: It's at the crossroads of so many different ideas. There's saving sage, purifying sage and aromatic sage. And in the end, cooking is a bit of all that too. Good food is food that tastes good, that pleases, that feels good, that restores. I wanted there to be more than one way of reading it. And then, for me, it's a bit like discreet grass, the kind you forget about. Sage isn't flashy. The idea was also to have a place where you feel good, where you don't have to show off. A place where you return to the very principle of the restaurant: to do yourself good.

Antoine Jacobsohn: In a garden, sage, like many other aromatic plants, has both repellent and attractive effects. Sage tends to attract bees and keep aphids away. And I really like the word sage. But why the countryside? Why leave Paris?

A.C.: I didn't leave Paris. I've opened a new restaurant that complements my Parisian restaurants. I think we all have moments in our lives when we have different expectations. When we want to invest our energy differently. Today, I realize that I want to take more time, to be less immediate. I really fell in love with the Perche region. Then I realized that it was a really rich region in terms of agriculture and diversity. And, with the idea of investing myself in a long-term project, with a little more thought put into certain things, I found that it made sense to be at the heart of this quality production.

A.J.: I think it's important because it's a relationship with time. When you work with plants or in agriculture, you're always looking at the long term.

Whereas in the kitchen, everything seems to be timed...

A.C.: Yes, that's true, but there are also a lot of dishes that we anticipate. This week, we made beef cheek. We started it the day before, simmered it, then took the sauce, tied it up and re-seasoned it...

Do you feel you're part of a time that's getting longer?

A.C.: In any case, that's what I'm looking for. I want to be less in this frenzy of doing.

A.J. : When you create a garden, or when you maintain it, you know that it takes two, three, four, five years before it's installed. it takes at least ten years to change a garden. After eighteen years at the head of the Potager du roi, I'm not even sure I've changed it much. A garden has a life of its own. But the gardener can also have a certain immediacy. When the zucchinis start up, you have to go there every day...

What do you see in a vegetable garden that you wouldn't see anywhere else?

A.J.: Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie, the creator of the Potager du roi, explained that "a fruit and vegetable garden must be like a well-laid table". You must always find everything you need to eat at any given time of year.

A.C.: There's also an idea of harmony behind this well-laid table. There's a question of both organization and aesthetics.

A.J.: I agree. when one of the gardeners asked me yesterday about ornamental plants, I told him that all edible plants are ornamental. Organization is a bit of a joy. One of the joys I always have is that this useful garden is also pleasant. This garden - or a table where you find what you want to eat - can be pleasant to look at. There's no contradiction between the well-organized and the beautiful. In organizational terms, aesthetic or not, whatever is most intensely cultivated is very close to the gardener's home. As you move further away, the produce is still just as good, but it's the crops you care less about. That's permaculture design today.

Organization and control...

A.J.: On the other hand, you have to accept that you can't control everything...

A.C.: Which is not the case in the kitchen. Sometimes you make things that go wrong, but you're always in control. Maybe that's why being in the garden is such a balancing act for me. it allows me to let go, to let things happen, to stop being the all-powerful boss of her own world.

A.J.: But in the kitchen, you don't control the quality of the products from the outset. You can certainly choose them. But when you pick them, the strawberry in the sun is generally better than the one under the leaf. But the person buying the tray doesn't know that.

A.C.: No, on the other hand, the person who buys it may very well go and buy strawberries from so-and-so, because he makes sure that there aren't too many leaves, that his strawberries are well exposed. That's also why I've built up a relationship of trust over several years with the growers, and why we're able to have these discussions.

A.J.: That's the double time for me. Trust can only come with time. And with, how can I put it, the recognition of each other's difficulties. Including the difference in time management. That's also why I think it's essential for gardeners to taste what they produce. They need to know if the vegetable or fruit, at that moment, is good or not for the cuisine the chef wants to make.

Is the best way to discover the world through taste?

A.C.: Through taste. It's a great way, in any case. It's also a way of sharing. What I like about my job is that, once around the table, everyone's on an equal footing. It's a place of sharing where, generally speaking, we forget a little about the differences we may have outside.

A.J.: I agree. It's a place of reconciliation. Is taste a way of discovering the world? Yes, and there are universal things about taste. When you let people taste a good peach, everyone agrees on it. There's something really primal about it. But I have a question, Amandine: how do you manage to work in several places at once? How does it work? Are you schizophrenic?

A.C.: Well, Mr. Shrink: No! [Laughs.] Each place has its own creativity. I'm sure there isn't just one garden in your head. You can imagine a slightly romantic garden by a river, or a more factual one, a small area for a house in the suburbs... each time you see very different things. It's a bit the same for me. A kitchen, like a garden, can be designed in many different ways. I didn't want to limit myself to a single expression. I think that when you're able to think on your feet, you can express it with other constraints, in other circumstances. That's what fascinates me.

A.J. : That's true. Maybe I'm more of a monomaniac. But it's true that I can imagine a different organization depending on whether I'm in a suburban garden on sandy ground or in the countryside by a river. I'll choose different vegetables, but at the same time I'll need cucumbers in both. There are constants that will come back.

A.C.: Yes, and it's the same in the kitchen.

But for all that, it's true that you can't have the same cucumber at Népita, Luce, in Perche or here at Pouliche.

A.C.: Oh no, it's completely different. These are four radically different identities. Different, but with common values.

Like a fashion designer working on several collections at the same time, and sometimes even for different houses...

A. C. : Yes, I think that's it. Sometimes, you'll think about a subject, and then you'll say to yourself that it's a great idea, but it doesn't fit in this place. On the other hand, it would be perfect here or there. Having several locations creates this buzz. You just have to be careful not to get lost.

What's essential in a vegetable garden?

A.C.: Aromatic herbs. I don't cook much with spices, but I love herbs. I make a lot of herbaceous condiments. A few days ago, we made a beurre monté with angelica, which I've rediscovered. As for vegetables, I love green beans, I have childhood memories of incredible products. White peaches are the same. My mother's peaches were small and bitter, and had a very particular taste, not very sweet, with flesh that was a little mealy. I think it was an old peach tree, not grafted at all. Unfortunately, this type of peach is disappearing, and we're moving towards standardization of taste...

A. J. : The point of the kitchen garden is to offer a collection. It's not a conservatory. The other day, I was transcribing a text by a head gardener at the Potager du roi, in the 1870-1880s, who lamented the fact that growers had already lost interest in the garden.he lamented the interest of growers in having trees or shrubs that produced a lot, even if the taste was mediocre. If you want good products, you have to go to a collector. That's probably why "from fork to fork" is so popular.

A.C.: In the right sense of the word, it's all about making the circuit from garden to kitchen. The intention is good, but it's still very difficult to organize. When I started the garden at home, I thought I'd grow all the herbs for the restaurant. After two months, I realized that there was a reality check: your job isn't out there. It's a real skill and it takes time. And then, what I find great is that in France we have very different terroirs. Why deprive ourselves?

The logic and constraints of mass production have also changed our gardens and our plates...

A.J.: I'm partial to strawberries. Today, what we generally eat is a hybrid from the end of the 18th century, which didn't exist before. What did exist then were wild strawberries and musk strawberries. It's the best in the world, it's soft, it's small, it tastes like a Tagada. But it's untransportable. I've found some 16th-century paintings where you can see that, to pick them, they cut off the branches and made a bouquet with strawberries as flowers, so that they could be preserved and eaten.

A.C.: Radishes have always been grown for their roots, but I love radish seeds, or rather radish fruits. Nobody grows them, because they're designed for picking radishes. The other day, I tasted endive flowers. It's very sweet, interesting, with a hint of honey...

A.J.: The flowers I like, which have the same taste as the vegetable, are arugula flowers...

A.C.: Oh yes, they're delicious. you can find them here. Market gardeners have realized how interesting it is.

A.J.: In the 1990s, I worked for the Conseil national des arts culinaires, or Cnac. We selected the Saint-Valery-sur Somme carrot. For me, it's the best carrot I've ever tasted. This variety has real particularities, first of all visually. It's not just crisp and crunchy like a Nantes carrot, but also has a mellow side. Raw, it "crunches"; cooked, it has an almost meaty, chewy side. I'm also thinking of the Milan cabbage from Pontoise, which is still produced around Pontoise. It's a cabbage that has everything in common with cabbage, except the muskiness. So it's baked in the oven, just with butter and thyme.

A. C. : Ah, I love them! And these cabbages are really beautiful. I remember Laurent Berrurier's, so majestic that we just wanted to put them on tables like that.

When you've worked for this kind of past-oriented structure, how do you project yourself into the future?

A.J.: I think that at Cnac, we were actually preparing for the future. The aim was to draw up an inventory, a snapshot of everything that was still being produced in France. At the time this work was carried out, there was no PGI yet. In reality, it was a way of seeing what could be transferred to PGI or PDO status. And to go all the way round. Take samphire, for example: there was a tradition of picking samphire in the Bay of the Somme or the Charente estuary, but this inventory work certainly helped and encouraged the development of the sector. And chefs like Yannick Alléno have also taken up the torch...

The producer has a responsibility, but so does the chef...

A.C.: Yes, we are ambassadors. You may have the best produce in the world, but there has to be a chef who manages to do something with it, to sublimate it. Already, all the customers are going to say "Ah! but this stuff is magnificent". "And then, when they go back to the market, they'll see the Milanese cabbage from Pontoise and they'll say "It's great, I've tasted it, it's too good", and they'll buy it. We have the opportunity, and the duty, to promote and showcase fabulous products. A restaurant is a showcase.

So, what's the next vegetable we'll be seeing everywhere?

A.C.: A few years ago, the Pardailhan turnip was all the rage, a fabulous turnip. No one makes them anymore. I wanted to have some for next year, but I couldn't find any. That's also what I find interesting about cooking, as with vegetables and seeds, this notion of desirability, of fashion.

A. J. : Like Sichuan pepper... At one point, nobody knew it existed, that people were producing it. Then, all of a sudden, Sichuan peppers took off. I'm on the board of the Conservatoire national des plantes à parfum, médicinales et aromatiques. I chose to include an English variety of rosemary in their collection: fresh, it has quite a medicinal side; dry, it's even more astonishing, losing its camphor aspect and becoming more minty. Its fragrance is reminiscent of the garrigue, a little like savory...

A. C. : Savory is underrated!

A.J.: It needs a vegetable that has something to say. Even in its leaves, savory has an angular side that's a little hard to adopt

The importance of gardeners also being gourmets...

A. J. : All the good gardeners I know are also good cooks. And all the chefs I know love to garden.

A. C. : For us, the garden is our raw material. It's like potter's clay. You need that. It's your subject. If you don't have it, you're sterile.

How do you feel about climate change? I suppose we can no longer cultivate like Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie?

A.J.: It's one of the subjects I'm most interested in today. I'm co-organizing a conference in June 2025 on the conservation of historic gardens in the context of climate change. First of all, I don't think it's all that complicated. Climate change is here to stay, and fluctuations are becoming increasingly pronounced. Biologist Olivier Hamant explains that we've gone from a system or culture of the mean to a system of the standard deviation. This year, with the rains, the tomatoes weren't very good, but if you had them in tunnels, you could produce them. So it's not an immediate problem. But how do we deal with it in the long term? How can we ensure that the trees, especially the trees, manage these changes over time? We need to find varieties that can cope with fluctuations. In Italy, Isabella Dalla Ragione has identified the varieties of fruit and vegetables depicted in Italian paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries, and then pinpointed those that can be found today. A number of these varieties are actually French. i'm interested in bringing them back to the Paris region and seeing what happens - that's my engineering side. It's the epigenetics, the difference between the genotype and the phenomenon, the differerence between what the genetic material is and how this material is expressed. And it expresses itself differently depending on environmental conditions.

A.C.: When I opened Pouliche, I had read a lot about the impact of food and agriculture. And I knew that you couldn't imagine thinking about a restaurant today in the same way as you did thirty or fifty years ago. Short circuits and seasonal produce just seem so... obvious.

A. J. : It's obvious, but at the same time, it's exactly what they didn't want to do before. When the king wanted something, it was precisely because it wasn't commonplace.

A.C.: The exceptional, we always want the exceptional.

A. J. : So we have to come back to things that are unusual, while remaining in season... We're back to fashion and the pendulum swinging... So the ball is in the producers' court.

A.C.: You also have to be careful not to be too extreme. I have an iPhone and a pair of sneakers made from petroleum. If you're too focused on certain positions, you lose people. We mustn't be too communitarian, on the contrary. A restaurant is there to bring people together.

The mission of the Potager du roi is "to produce, experiment and pass on". Isn't that also the restaurant's mission?

A.J.: The question is, how do we make the transition from this kind of pleasure - the arugula flower or the Capron strawberry - to something that we can feed everyone? Ultimately, who is our production for? And how can we use it to go beyond the limits of our products? How do we apply this to canteen menus, for example? In these historic gardens - Versailles, Vaux-le-Vicomte, or Chantilly - but not only there, we have the opportunity to try to manage, to put in place things that can help us imagine the transition. How are we going to manage twenty-five, thirty years? Heritage has to be the place where we experiment with the future. And the Potager du roi makes this possible. And I think that in the kitchen, it's more or less the same questions.

A. C. the real question is how to make a living as a chef, because there are hundreds of ways of being a chef today: the chef-owner who's out in his shop every day, the chef who's developed several businesses, the chef who does consulting, the chef who does events... So many really different ways of working. Today, I don't earn a single euro from the restaurant, I earn my living from consulting, events and brand partnerships...

A.J.: The restaurant is both a passion and a showcase...

A.C.: I'm not at all Manichean in saying that small producers are all wonderful and big industrialists are all bastards. As chefs, we're in the rare position of being able to get inside production lines and factories, to have access to specifications. Obviously, the system isn't perfect, but we can exchange ideas and push for more and better things. There aren't many people who can do that, and I think it's also our responsibility. The economics of partnership and image commitment can push in the right direction.

A.J.: And promote the fruit of research and experimentation carried out in the garden or in the kitchen... But how can we maintain not only short circuits, but also knowledge between trades? The gardener's time, the gardener's successes compared to the chef's cooking time, how do the two understand each other? Because in reality, as some studies show, when you buy a food product, you only pay a third of the price. How can we find out the real price?