Mory Sacko: Time to mature

Gault&Millau: Why did you renovate your restaurant so quickly?

Mory Sacko: We opened in 2020. It was my first job as a chef, my first try. Little by little, I felt that my cuisine was beginning to evolve, and that the layout was constraining me in this development. So I felt the need to affirm the spirit I had created for MoSuke, both through the place and the kitchen.

G&M: Is it also a desire to move upmarket?

M. S.: Clearly. For the comfort of our customers and my teams. We've enlarged the workspace and reduced the number of place settings to offer greater privacy and improve the quality of service and experience. But there was also a desire for freedom. In the beginning, you need to assert a culinary identity, sometimes with the help of "gimmicks". Today, I think the work has been done to establish what MoSuke is and what my cuisine is. I feel more at ease when it comes to more daring proposals... or even more classic ones!

G&M: How does the new layout enhance the dining experience?

M. S.: Customers are now almost all facing the dining room and the service area. The plates don't arrive behind their backs. I also wanted to refocus my kitchen, including physically. The tables can be made smaller because the sequences are much clearer. In the beginning, we had almost eight dishes on the table at the same time. It was a bit all over the place. It's true that these days we see a lot of satellite dishes, especially in gourmet restaurants. But I wanted to get back to basics.

We've also installed surfaces between the banquettes that act as serving surfaces. This allows us to be much more creative with complements, such as mousses and sauces, which are necessary, but not necessarily very beautiful when served on the plate. Now you can place them on the sideboard and pour them at the last moment. These gestures, sometimes difficult to perform, are now easier. The same goes for bottles, which are no longer on the table as they used to be. In a gastro - perhaps it's a whim!-we don't want customers to serve themselves water. It pollutes the space less and forces us to be more attentive, adding a touch of luxury.

G&M: How does this evolution translate into the kitchen?

M. S.: For some dishes, we're moving towards a more classic approach. For example, we have a fish dish with spinach shoots. It sounds simple, but we accompany it with a jus, which is a little more complicated to make. It's actually several juices in a row, a poultry juice to wet the dish, and a beef juice, which we then use for the bones. There's a lot of technique involved. It's served with fermented West Indian chilli and a lightly spiced hollandaise sauce. A year ago, I wouldn't have dared make this very French dish, because I'd have thought you could find it in a bistro. In the end, we pushed the work on the sauce to the limit, and it's the tastes that reveal its complexity.

Another example: at the start of the meal, we offer an onsen tamago, a Japanese-style perfect egg. But we've rethought it a little. We still have a dashi broth, but we now serve it with small soy-marinated vegetables, wakame and sweetbread gratins, with the idea of elaborating the textures more and taking it towards a more French than Japanese side. So it's a question of going further with what we're already doing or, on the contrary, making things clearer by simplifying the number of ingredients on the plate, but developing the work in the kitchen. We're perhaps less demonstrative and more into feeling. It's a cuisine that's even more personal than before.

G&M: Have you also changed your signature dish, beef in mafé sauce?

M. S.: We've touched on it, but with a lighter touch. It's a beef that we mature with shea butter, cooked on the barbecue for smoky notes. We reworked the dressing and resized it. Before, we had a generous piece of meat weighing almost 150g. Now, in keeping with the logic of the menu, and the fact that we're eating less meat, we've come to remove around 40% of the weight. We take more time to enjoy it, and don't get stuck with the "too much meat" feeling. There's more emphasis on finesse, but the elements that make up the dish are the same.

G&M: In the end, it's the whole menu that changes?

M. S.: Yes, the sequencing is different. We used to have 8-course menus, with all the appetizers arriving at the same time: the egg, 4 or 5 tarts, snacks... Now there's the egg with its broth, then lobster, lean meats... things that are brought in separately. This allows the customer to concentrate on each of the dishes in front of him. It's up to us to follow the rhythm, to make sure that the first sequence is served quickly, then slow down. This is where decoration and comfort have a role to play.

The only element we've kept in the room is the tree mold in the center. In Mali, it's said that in the middle of the village there's always a palaver tree, under which everyone sits down to talk. Social ties are forged in the shade of this tree. I like the image.

Read Gault&Millau's review of the former MoSuKe