Winter has sowed its first signs. Pumpkins, walnuts, Christophanes, spaghetti squash … wedged in the center of the tables in the dining room, they are piled so large that buildings threaten to collapse. We recognize them, these cucurbits. We saw them earlier, during a walk in the vegetable garden, just before eating. They were in a greenhouse, lined up to ripen well.
In the ground I grew a little of everything: artichokes, currants, lettuce, tomatoes (late season) and more surprising things, like cavolo nero, Italian cabbage with large, thin leaves and pitted, or saturated, a form of dandelion …
In the Doyenné kitchen garden, a restaurant-inn in Saint-Vrain, a village in Essonne, an inventory of herbs, fruits and vegetables can be signed by a pupil of Jacques Prévert. Other than that on top of the venue, opened in July, is not a French poet, but two Australian chefs, James Henry and Sean Kelly, 39 and 38 years old, respectively.
The idea is simple, even basic: from the garden to the plate. We eat what grows. And even what is loud – black pigs. But for those who grew up with frozen veggies, ate in bars where sauces were industrial and had no idea where the ingredients came from after reading the menu, the idea is ambitious.
As proof of this, the enthusiastic images circulating on Instagram, of the first dishes served this summer, and the simple salad that accompanies every meal or a variety of vegetables as an appetizer. Or pictures of the restaurant room, an old barn with glass walls and wooden tables and a huge fireplace that blazes in this fall every evening. The rooms that opened at the end of October will undoubtedly provoke the same reaction. They are comfortable and nicely decorated, but something rare on a night of over 250 euros, no TV, no minibar, not even a reception. “The Doyenné is not a hotel,James Henry smilesIt’s a restaurant you sleep in. It’s that easy. »
The two men put their hands in the ground, discarding the herbicides, and do not plow so as not to run into the humus.
This idea, the two assistants have been feeding for more than six years. They have known each other for twenty years, after meeting in Melbourne, where they were young chefs. James Henry made a name for himself in the early 2010s, once in Paris, when he took over the management of the Au Pass Kitchen, at 11e The Circle, Then the Bones, an address that has been the subject of a rare craze in Parisian gastronomy, especially for the foreign chef, with endless queues and an inventive menu and menu with veal heads and duck hearts served without complexes. As for Sean Kelly, he worked in London, then took up the position of Au Passage when Henry left, before working in several establishments as well as in the kitchen of the Australian Embassy.
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