Laurent KLECZEWSKI

Chef : 1 restaurant A product of Polish immigration, chef Laurent Kleczewski, winner of the Cuisine des Prairies et des Pâturages Normandie 2024 trophy, fondly remembers the large family gatherings that gave him a taste for cooking.

Presentation

If he hadn't been a chef, Laurent Kleczewski could have been a storyteller. He talks endlessly about his long and eventful professional career, and fondly recalls his childhood in Lille, spent with loving and honest parents.This grandson of Polish emigrants would undoubtedly make an excellent ambassador for diversity at a time when many dream of closing borders. "My four grandparents were Polish. In Lille, we lived in a working-class neighborhood, rue des Trois Molettes, near rue Esquermoise. My friends were of Italian or North African origin, so we'd go and eat at each other's houses, and I'd bring a babka my mother had made and we'd share it."

A real turning point

At home, the parents regularly welcomed Polish emigrants who came to the region to work. They speak loudly, in a language he doesn't understand, his mother cooks for them for hours, they play belote, çeats smoked brisket washed down with large glasses of Pelican beer or vodka that one of them had brought back from the old country. "And then, one Sunday, as a family, with the beautiful tablecloths and crockery out, my mother asked me to help her with the salmon dish. She suggested I decorate it as I wished. I was congratulated and my conviction was made, I would be a chef!"

Ten exhilarating and grueling years

His time at the excellent Le Touquet hotel school - "great teachers " - left a lasting impression on the young man.riences at Fouquet's, the Louis XV, the Pyramide and with Jacques Maximin ("a culinary genius but rather temperamental") before settling down. "I was exhausted from ten years of hard work. My mother had come to visit me in the South of France, and when she saw me, she thought I had terminal cancer."

A new challenge in his fifties

Laurent Kleczewski put his feet up, became a father for the first time and, with his wife Élodie, decided to set up his own business in 2002, in Offranville, Seine-Maritime. "At the end of 2024, we'll be moving out of Colombier, where we're just the managers, and into our own home, just a few kilometers from the sea. We bought a beautiful building that had to be completely transformed. We are both enthusiastic and impatient to begin this new adventure." Gault&Millau rewarded his market cuisine with the Cuisine des Prairies et des Pâturages Normandie 2024 trophy.