Romain Meder, cook & Gérard Germaine, gardener, at Domaine de Primard

Romain Meder arrived at Domaine de Primard in April 2022 with a highly distinctive style of cuisine, first revealed at the Plaza Athénée, where, with Alain Ducasse, he explored and laid the foundations of naturalness. In the same vein, he has designed the menus for the Domaine de Primard's two restaurants: Octave, where fine country cooking flourishes, and Les Chemins, with its more gastronomic approach. He can count on the support of head gardener Gérard Germaine to help him develop this highly plant-based cuisine. Gérard Germaine knows Primard well, as he has been managing this sumptuous park, originally designed by the famous Belgian landscape architect Jacques Wirtz, for over fifteen years. In particular, it was he who took care of the large rose garden, enriching and embellishing it in accordance with the wishes of the previous owner, Catherine Deneuve.

Gault&Millau: How did you come to work at Domaine de Primard?

Gérard Germaine: I come from another profession. I was a photographer. I learned about plants and gardening from my wife, who was a botanist and florist, and the nurserymen she worked with. At first, it was mostly cut flowers, then we created a foliage plantation for florists. We knew the former owner of the estate (Catherine Deneuve), and that's how I came to maintain her garden. In 2018, Frédéric Biousse and Guillaume Foucher (founders of Domaines de Fontenille) acquired Primard with the firm intention of turning it into a hotel and restaurant. Which I thought was a great idea! These beautiful private houses are uninhabited for most of the year, but a project like this would allow them to be lived in all the time. So they entrusted me with the task of creating a vegetable garden, which I installed where it stood in the XIXᵉ century, in a small meadow, which had been transformed into a soccer pitch. While planting ornamental trees, I had come across 18th-century cast-iron watering networks, and the soil was much better there. So it was logical that the vegetable garden should be located there.

G&M: Is it easy to make the transition from ornamental gardening to market gardening?

G. G.: I used to do some market gardening for myself, but nothing professional. But I'm passionate about plants. My wife cooks mostly vegetal food, and I've been making my own sourdough bread for thirty-five years. I'm interested in tastes and products. When I heard that Romain Meder was joining us at Primard, I was delighted. My daughters told me I was incredibly lucky, that he was someone who knew what a vegetable was. Before his arrival, I'd done a rather ornamental and didactic vegetable garden. But this time, I had to make it productive, which meant drawing up plans for sowing and rotation. It's already a little more specialized. I think that of all the gardening professions, the market gardener really has the most difficult part. The most important gardeners on the planet are market gardeners.

Romain Meder: To help him, I introduced him to Mehdi Redjil, the former head gardener at the Queen's kitchen garden in Versailles, which supplied the Plaza Athénée. Mehdi moved to the Chevreuse Valley, 30 minutes from here. He'll be harvesting his first crop this year. It's funny because when two gardeners meet, it's like two cooks. They speak the same language, have their own stories and models. Like us, they talk about their Alain Ducasse or their Paul Bocuse!

G&M: How did you design the kitchen garden and choose the plant varieties?

R. M.: At the very beginning of the project, even before arriving at Primard, I talked to Gérard about what he knew, what he had mastered and what he hadn't. I gave him a list of products to choose from, and we decided to go ahead with it. I gave him a list of the basic products I was used to working with. I said to him: "We'll start quietly, and then we'll see."

G. G.: I told Romain that I'd give priority to the vegetables that are easiest to grow, such as leafy vegetables. Among root vegetables, some are easy to grow, others less so. We do well with carrots and beet, but I'm not going to grow salsify, scorzonera or chervis either. They're more difficult and take up a lot of space, like potatoes. But I am going to plant helianthis. I'm experimenting, seeing if it works or not, if it's worth it. For example, I love wild strawberries, but it's a very fragile fruit, which has to be on the customer's plate within two hours of picking. This takes time and, on Sunday mornings, it's not easy. So I have to give up.

G&M: Isn't the aim of this vegetable garden to achieve self-sufficiency?

R. M.: No. In any case, it's too small. In any case, it's too small. It can't supply both restaurants. The idea is rather to choose carefully what we plant there. We're not going to start growing tomatoes there. You'd need greenhouses, and there's no point in having them here. Besides, I work with growers who make incredible tomatoes. We concentrate on what requires less equipment. Radishes, turnips, beet, chard, beans, zucchinis... we go step by step. Another advantage is that Gérard knows the field like the back of his hand. As soon as he spots a plant, he sticks his head out the window and says to me: "Here, I found this. If you're interested, there are some in such and such a corner."

G. G.: I pick anything edible, and Romain has a genius for using them. The site offers some fifteen varieties of wild plants to enhance your cooking.

G&M: What does having a vegetable garden nearby bring to your cooking?

R. M.: Freshness, immediacy. All those little roots are fragile. As soon as they have to be transported or refrigerated for 24 hours, it's not the same. The radishes I used to offer Octave at the start of his meal, just to munch on, or the carrots we'd just picked, are pure freshness! The garden is what gives rhythm to the change of menu. If the beets are ripe, I know I can imagine a dish around that vegetable, whether it's for Octave or Les Chemins. The result is a lively cuisine, with menus that aren't frozen on a piece of paper for three or four months. From there, I bring in other products from market gardeners and producers to dress the bride.

G&M: What difference does it make to prepare this natural cuisine in this bucolic setting, closer to the elements than you were on avenue Montaigne?

R. M.: My cooking remains the same. But what I'm proposing makes more sense. In terms of pure reflection and technique, it doesn't change a thing. But, just now, I saw mousserons, just next door, on a hillock. And that changes everything. We're going to pick them and I'm going to rework a dish with them. It's within reach and, above all, I'm not dependent on anyone. That wasn't the case in Paris, where, even though the Queen's kitchen garden was dedicated to us, I was dependent on Mehdi, and then on his successors.

G&M: Gérard, what do you think of Romain's cooking?

G. G.: It's quite surprising! Romain has a passion for bitter. I'm not crazy about it myself, but he doses it with such precision... I've tasted some incredible dishes! But then, it's hard to ask me for an opinion on his cooking. What's certain is that Romain's arrival enhances my work and the site. His presence makes the garden stand out, right down to its ornamental aspect. People need to come and stroll around, sit down. We've installed two wooden gazebos with tables. You can order a basket and have a picnic there, while you're at it. That's the whole point of the game.