SPECIAL EDITION: ALBURN WILLIAM MEETS ALAIN DUCASSE

My short stint recently in Paris involved studying the kitchen operations at Alain Ducasse’s Restaurants in Plaza Athénée, Paris including 59 Poincare, IL Cortile and the Spoon’s as well as experiencing the dining and service offered at these restaurants.

The meeting with Alain Ducasse and his team was truly an eye opener. It was great to learn from a culinary focused organization whose one greatest mission was to challenge its chefs to the limits of their creativity and to challenge the products they work with to the greatest levels of taste.

One of the truths that became evident to me was the focus on marrying flavors through different cooking techniques that had been meticulously perfected (No fusion). Another formula that works for Ducasse is to maximize culinary excellence and quality to achieve bottomline, against the general common grain of cost cutting.

As a foodservice consultant primarily servicing the hotel sector, I have seen to varying degrees the institutionalisation of foodservice in hotels through a central production unit. Stocks, bases and commissary work are centralized, to help rationalize cost through labour and space. At the Plaza Athenee, where Alain Ducasse is in charge of supervising all food served in the restaurants, the banqueting rooms and the room service; every kitchen is an independent entity with its own chef, production and commissary work. Each kitchen outsources its own products to specifications. The gastronomique “Restaurant Plaza Athénée” does not handle banqueting and is solely dedicated to a la carte service.

And of course the kitchens……. They were meticulously crafted by selected hand picked specialists; excellently engineered, even to microdetails on coves, walls, lighting etc that presents the perfect environment for the chef to create. Whether it was back of house kitchen or front of house show type, none could tell the difference in styling on an Alain Ducasse kitchen. The message was clear…. the kitchens were not just for the guest to gawk at…… it was for the Chef at work.

Quote:
“The Chef pushes to the limit the logic of edible products, and in return, these products push him to the limit of his talent, his desire and his imagination”
Alain Ducasse

By Alburn William- Creative Kitchen Planners
(Written in 2002)