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Marseilles (AFP)
1:00 p.m., the time of the shot for the team of the restaurant “Le Présage” on the heights of Marseille. Here, no gas, very little electricity: the cuisine of this restaurant depends on the sun.
When it comes time to cook, the brigade does not light anything, but deploys a dish two meters in diameter covered with Schaeffer mirrors, a prototype of a German company.
If this mirror has existed for more than 50 years, “Le Présage” is the first solar restaurant in Europe, says Richard Loyen, Managing Director of Enerplan, representing solar energy professionals in France.
Oriented towards the sun, this parable reflects the light rays towards a hearth located in the back kitchen, then towards a cast iron plate whose temperature can rise up to 300 degrees in about twenty minutes. It is on this plate and thanks to ovens, also solar-powered, that the founder of the restaurant Pierre-André Aubert and his team concoct their dishes.
And the recipes offered are indexed to the energy consumption they require. For example, there is no question of offering pasta, which “consumes insane energy” since it is necessary “to boil a huge pot of water for 100 grams”, points out Mr. Aubert.
The experience is not “a return to the candle”, nor “a trip to the Amish”, assures Pierre-André Aubert. A 39-year-old aeronautical engineer who later converted, he is now preparing a thesis on … “restaurant design optimized for solar cooking”.
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Energy is around 10% of a restaurant’s carbon footprint, recalls Richard Loyen, who has also been associated for a year with the experiment carried out at “Présage”. And, he emphasizes, “vegetable cuisine and local procurement” further reduce this footprint.
Julienne of green vegetables, asparagus risotto …: the recipes change regularly, but are made up of “local products cooked in the sun”, abounds Pierre-André Aubert. “Even the herbs come from here,” he promises, pointing to the wild herbs surrounding the tables laid out on land in Château-Gombert, a district in the north of Marseille.
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A stone’s throw from this peri-urban meadow, the Technopôle Marseille Provence, and two major engineering schools: École Centrale and Polytech Marseille. According to the City of Marseille, this area is the leading French research center in mechanics and energy after Paris, with 170 companies, 4,000 employees and nearly 2,600 students. So many people looking for a good table between noon and two.
“Very good, very fragrant, very fresh,” Marie-Christine Henriot, deputy director of Polytech Paris-Saclay, is enjoying herself on that day, traveling to the Marseille branch of the school. Unlike other customers, she is more surprised by the restaurant’s “culinary innovations” than by its solar kitchens – which use technology whose experimental process she is following.
His “students spin at 3,000 revolutions / minute to imagine the world of tomorrow,” she smiles.
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So many innovations of which his neighbor at the table, Philippe Pannier, Deputy Director of Polytech Marseille, is also proud: his students continue to improve the prototypes of ovens used at the “Présage”.
Pierre-André’s kitchen fits in a container and customers are seated under the metal structure of a greenhouse, or on the grass. When the sun is hidden by clouds, “we light the electric hotplates,” admits the chef.
The engineer is constantly experimenting: for example, he seeks to develop a system for recovering the methane produced by restaurant waste, or to reuse cooking water – once filtered – to irrigate the land.
Its ambition: to open several “guinguettes” of the same type – “why not for the Olympics?” -, but also, by the end of 2022, a “hard” restaurant on the grounds of Château-Gombert. The project, estimated at 1.8 million euros, will revolve around “a bioclimatic building” surrounded by an “edible garden”.
© 2021 AFP
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