Tuesday, January 27 / Team Players
The faces behind the culinary creativity
The team of eight culinary experts who journeyed Belgium to Nespresso's Atelier de Création here in Lyon is just that — a team. They seem to have dispensed with the typical kitchen hierarchy. You don't hear them shouting, you don't see them panicking. "This is how we work back in the restaurant," says the titular boss, Chef Sang Hoon Degeimbre, "everyone knows how to do everything." Degeimbre's restaurant, l'Air du temps on the outskirts of Brussels, has won two Michelin stars and scored a remarkable 18/20 Gault Millau rating. Benoît Blairvacq, who was also present for the Nespresso workshops in Lyon, takes care of the vegetables. Which means he not only helps develop and prepare all of the restaurant's vegetable dishes, he grows all the vegetables himself in his garden ("we have 30 varieties of tomatoes!") and brings them to the restaurant every two days. Degeimbre, 39, says he began dreaming of opening his own restaurant when he was 14, but he neglected to follow the standard route to becoming a chef. First he worked as a butcher, then waiter, then wine steward. He didn't get a chance to work as a professional cook until he opened l'Air du Temps in 1997. "My career has been unusual," Degeimbre says with a typically self-effacing smile.François Gérard is the sous-chef at l'Air du Temps. He has been there five years, which makes him a veteran. Natalia is a young Spanish pastry chef who has been at the restaurant eight months. Simon, Belgian, has been there three months. Toshiko came to Belgium from Japan six years ago, but he has only been at l'Air du Temps for a month.For Nespresso's Atelier de Création, Degeimbre and his team demonstrated the food-pairing prowess they've developed at l'Air du Temps, where they serve dishes such as lobster with strawberry gaspacho, and "The Kiwitre," the house specialty, which matches oysters with kiwis.To bring home the point about pairing food with Nespresso's Grands Crus coffees, Milovan Sale made the trip to Lyon with the l'Air du Temps crew. Sale works at the Laboratory of Science and Food Technology at the Institut Meurice in Brussels. He frequently collaborates with Chef Degeimbre to develop dishes based on the principles of "molecular gastronomy" — using scientific methods to create food with unexpected tastes and textures. "First I use my nose," Sale explains. "I taste, I smell, I pre-select foods that might go together. Then I use the machines to detect the molecules."Chef Degeimbre, who had been serving Nespresso Grands Crus espressos and coffees in his restaurant, spontaneously began to experiment with their aromas in his personal food trials, hunting for food-pairing associations. When Nespresso, aware of Degeimbre's reputation as an avant-garde haute cuisine chef, contacted him to be the anchor chef for the Atelier de création at the Bocuse d’Or, he accepted without hesitation. He was more than ready to take on the challenge of showing how inspiring the different Nespresso Grands Crus aromas could be for guests attending the January workshop in Lyon.
