In the “dining room”, 172 people divided into tables of six, who will each taste three dishes cooked by three pairs of different chefs. In the “kitchen”, the chefs, gathered around a giant brazier-plancha. The “Three-band billiard” imagined by Laurent Seminel, the organizer of the Entremets festival, can begin.
With, on the kitchen side, four essential ingredients that Laurent Seminel makes an art of instilling at all the events with which he sprinkles his festival:
1. Good humor by handfuls
In this festival placed under the sign of sharing and conviviality, relaxation is essential both in the room and in the kitchen, which here are gathered under the same roof of the Hall Billard. “We come here to see our friends again,” says Boris Campanella, the chef of the Crillon hotel in Paris. In all simplicity, the six chefs cook around the same brazier, sometimes helping each other out, in a good mood that makes Laurent Seminel happy.
2. A good dose of flexibility
It’s not easy to have to deal with the weather (fortunately, the weather was rather mild), the cooking method and the hazards that inevitably arise in this kind of adventure. But “adaptation is the basis of our business, where it makes perfect sense. In our business, we always live with three strangers: how many customers will come today, at what time and which dishes will they choose? », Explains François Gagnaire, head of Anicia, in Paris. With his sidekick of the day, Boris Campanella, they realized when they arrived in Chartres that half of the candied apples for the dessert had been forgotten in Paris… Never mind, the two chefs put up the dessert in circles, and things were settled.
Gourmet fortnight in Eure-et-Loir: two weeks to enjoy a restaurant!
And then, as Thomas Parnaud, the chef of the Michelin-starred restaurant Le Georges, in Chartres says, nothing could be worse than this evening meal of the first edition, three years ago, with 300 people in the same Hall Billard. The temperature had flirted with zero, but it remains in the minds of all those, guests and cooks, who have had a very beautiful experience, certainly unforgettable. “We imagined that it would be harder,” admits his one day partner Lionel Créteur, who came from Lectoure, in the Gers, where he runs the Racine restaurant.
3. A pinch of magic
Alchemy took hold between these six chefs, left their kitchens and gathered in pairs. “We decided on the menu over the phone, me driving and he in his restaurant,” remembers Michele Celozzi, chef at the Bœuf crowned in Chartres. “It’s super interesting as an exercise, because we didn’t know each other”, explains Benoît Bordier, chef of the restaurant Le Saint-Joseph in La Garenne-Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine), with whom he teams up.
The Entremets culinary festival returns to Chartres, from October 2 to 5
They are particularly happy with their dessert, prepared with four hands: a candied reinette apple, cocoa crumble and cocoa nibs, apple reduction coulis and popcorn syrup. “This one, I’m putting it on my menu this winter,” laughs Michele Celozzi.
4. Embers
No successful meal without controlled cooking. Around the giant brazier, placed on a trailer, there were some concerns before the start of the service. “You never know in advance if the fire will be powerful enough for what you have planned,” feared Michele Celozzi, who also confides his desire to discover a new tool. But the embers did not disappoint the chefs.
Seeing the red cheeks under the masks of the two cooks from the Georges who had come to lend a hand to the chefs, it was not the warmth that was lacking.
Geraldine Sellès
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