Marc Mano – In Memory of a Friend

Before I started a romance with Provence, Part of the Delights of France in 1997, first book in 2000, second book in 2017 and a digital edition in 2018, and soon in French, the translation is ready – I had an ongoing relationship with Burgundy וLyonWhen I lived inParis, that was the way to the south. I knew it well. But not yet the top.

In the 1990s, there was a geographical succession of five three-star chefs in Burgundy: Michel and Jean-Michel Laurent in Jounieh, Marc Manot in Saint-Père, Bernard Loiseau in Souliers, Georges Blanc in Venas, Jacques Lameloise in Chaignes. And near Lyon, the brilliant Alain Chapelle. And Bouquiz. I knew them all, but I became very close friends with Laurent, Manot and Loiseau.

I invited Marc Mano to Tel Aviv at the end of December 1999 for the launch of the Gumio 2000 guide. My friend, Ambassador France He made his residence in Jaffa available to me. Mark and his assistant prepared the two wonderful dishes that symbolize his cuisine, the croquette and the oyster in the freezer. It was an extraordinary evening.

Champagne flowed like water. Shimon Peres came, as a friend, and visited the kitchen. Manu and Peres talked, and when Peres visited Paris, they met again. I did not know about the continued connection between the two. When I asked for recommendations from leading chefs for my citizenship application, Mark wrote a moving letter, celebrating the fact that a leader like Shimon Peres came to my event, entered the kitchen and took an interest in what was going on there.

We met again in Paris on Pierre Trougreux's 70th birthday. All the three-star chefs were invited. Only one didn't show up. A chef who works in the center ParisMark was sick, with a high fever, and yet he came. With makeup on, so that they wouldn't notice the paleness of his face.

Another time, my daughter was with a friend in Paris. I was there too. I took them on a quick trip to Laurent, Mano, and Loiseau. In Mano's garden, we were served, with the aperitif, Mano-style escargot.

My daughter told the waiter that she was vegetarian and wouldn't eat the escargot. The waiter replied that they were vegetarian too. She wasn't convinced. They made her a garden vegetable cake...

A few years ago, inChristmas, I was in Paris and I called Marc to congratulate Françoise and him. He said, Are you in Paris? I'll send a taxi to pick you up. No less. I gave up. A few years later, on a family visit to Paris, we arranged to meet at his son's Parisian restaurant, which I had known as a child. But we didn't get along. Then I learned from Françoise that he was sick.

Mark was a culinary genius, but above all a man. We liked him very much.

Un grand bourguignon s'est extinguished

Marc Meneau died on December 9, at the age of 77. Il était un ami de longue date. Ma première visite à l'Espérance de Marc et Françoise date du milieu des années quatre-vingt. Trente-cinq ans déjà. Je suis revenu chez eux de temps en temps, avec toujours un immense plaisir.

A notre première rencontre, il m'longuement raconté son itinéraire culinaire, qui, par étapes successivees, l'a mené au sommet de la gastronomy mondiale. Tout en restant ancré dans sa Bourgogne natale et ses culinary traditions.

Meneau n'a jamais été apprenti ou stagiaire chez les autres. Grâce a un enorme travail et d'innumbrables essays, beaucoup de livres de gastronomy lus, et l'aide de quelques professionnels, il a su, du fait de son immense talent, se forger une identité culinaire inimitable.

Le long chapitre que je lui ai consecrated dans mon livre Les Plaisirs de la France (1997), est un hommage à ce surdoué.

But, plus qu'un immense cuisinier, Marc était un homme au grand cœur. Un ami. Le seul grand chef français que j'ai invité en Israel. Il a charmé mes invités par sa cuisine, son charisme et son affabilité naturelle.

I deplore his disappearance.

Mes pensées émues vont à Françoise et à Pierre.

Cooking with love

1,400 years in the same village

One day the phone rang, and a man I didn't know told me he wanted to thank me for an unforgettable experience that he and his wife had, thanks to an article I wrote about a gastronomic journey in Burgundy.

The place where the two spent two amazing days, and between each course, they were able to taste delicacies sent to them by the chef from the kitchen, after he learned what they were bringing to his restaurant, was Marc and Françoise Meneau's restaurant L'Esperance ("The Hope"). Three stars in the Michelin guide, 19 points in the Michelin Guide.

I had a fascinating dinner there, a breakfast that was the best ever, and I returned with nostalgia.

Marc Mano, in his fifties, is a man who has had it all for many years. Thirty years ago (fifty years today), out of love for his wife, he donned a chef's hat, opened a cookbook, and in a short time rose to the top of French cuisine.

I returned to his menu several times, and each time he told me about his new recipes, what he was doing with the pig in the winter menu – ears, hooves, etc. – and each time he was sure that I would stay to eat – but no, except for returning to the Kromski and the oysters in the freezer, his eternal hits. However, my first meal with him remains in my memory, one of those that will never be forgotten.

“It used to be hard to get customers and money – today, it’s hard to maintain the level, the advantage, the high score,” says Mano. But, having told me these things, he knew some difficult years. Because after all, the restaurant is located in one of the most remote places in France, the village of Saint-Père at the foot of the Vezelay hill, in the heart of the mountainous part of Burgundy. The roads are difficult, and in winter, some of them can be blocked. And then, even if you are a genius cook, and in 1988 you were crowned “Chef of the Year”, sometimes it’s not easy for you.

When I first arrived, L'Esperance's courtyard was lit with strings of colored lights and filled with luxurious vehicles. He and his wife are exemplary hosts in a glass-walled restaurant, a greenhouse in the garden, attached to their country hotel, which spares you the inhuman need to stagger after a royal dinner.

Food for Adventure

In the garden, two streams flow on their way to an old mill, winding their way through a royal vegetable garden with cherubs that provide, in terms of grandeur and size, a plausible basis for a legend about the origin of babies. The food at Mano, a self-taught cook who reached the top, is a legend in itself, full of surprises that confirm again and again the assertion that every three-star restaurant is so imprinted with the personality of the chef, the creator and the artist, that there is no resemblance between one and the other.

The restaurant and the Basilica of Sainte-Madeleine in Vozla, above Saint-Père, are the two main pilgrimage sites in the area. For Manu, there is an affinity between the two poles. The moment of takeoff in his career, Manu says, was in 1979, when he and his wife bought a residence adjacent to the church, and they live in its shade and peace.

When the Sistine Chapel singers came from Rome to sing in the basilica, Mano invited his fellow chefs to dine at his restaurant, as a way to share in “a cultural event, consistent with their professional ethics.” Since his grandparents were winemakers, in recent years he has restored a small vineyard on the hill, and he serves white wine and zela.

A trio dressed in red overalls is an anomaly in the restaurant's elegant human landscape. Who are they? Manu is trying his hand at a food-with-a-vision business: producing "adventure food" and delicacies for space travelers, which have already been tasted in space by a cosmonaut - a French one, of course. Equipped with this food, the trio is destined to drop onto Mount Cook in New Zealand, for a grueling trek on foot - and is well covered by the media. Dinner at L'Esperance is like a farewell to civilization.

Even in space, the French want to eat well. The “food for adventure,” developed by Manu, was first put to the test by the requirements of space and the strict specifications of NASA. “If you develop food that meets these requirements, it will be suitable for any use on Earth, around-the-world cruises, polar expeditions, Paris-Dakar – our main market, for now, until in twenty or thirty years there will be a large space market. We wanted to produce canned food that would be at the proper level of French cuisine, set up like in a restaurant: only fresh ingredients, no artificial ingredients.”

Some of Manu’s dishes – bread and cakes without crumbs, pigeons in lentils, chicken Dijon-style, shrimp soup – were eaten on the shuttle by the French cosmonaut, Baudry. He is now Manu’s partner in the factory, which produces 10,000 boxes a day – and is unable to keep up with orders from Japan. Baudry also took wine, but it is unpleasant to drink wine through a straw, and it also negatively affects the effort. He discovered that the lack of gravity causes wine to age very quickly.

I'm the only one eating alone. Embarrassing? No. First, you can concentrate on your plate and your glass, and have a conversation with the maitre d'hotel and the sommelier about the matters of the moment and eternity, which are so close to each other in a restaurant like this. You can listen to the noises in the hall, and follow what's happening at the nearby tables:

Who is “in the mood” – who has already experienced everything – who wants to enjoy every last penny, where is the fear of the sacred – and where is the embarrassment. For example, whether to eat with your hands or not. “Only a true gastronome will take a partridge leg in his hand and nibble on it,” says Manu, and the waiter brings a bowl to wash his hands for those who dare.

The story of Marc Mano

Marc Mano defines himself as a “village boy”:

We've been here for 1,400 years, and in the church books we went back to the 11th century. I started cooking at the age of twenty-six, out of love – before that I was in management. I married a girl who loved to eat and couldn't cook, but she knew how to taste. My mother had a grocery store in the village.

In 1969 I converted the business into a crepe shop, and a year later – into a restaurant. That day I opened a cookbook: I remember the first recipe I tried to cook, which was, of course, extremely difficult. At every stage I called my mother-in-law, who was a cook, and she explained it to me.

And because I was an excellent manager, I invested twice as much money into converting the house into a restaurant as I could afford, and I had no choice but to go into the kitchen – and work hard to pay. I cooked according to a pre-war cookbook, intended for housewives.

I was lucky, and it worked: within two years, literally in a flash, we received our first Michelin star. I knew fifty recipes well, but apart from that, zero. I realized that I had exhausted my abilities.

I was looking for a retired chef to guide me, and I met Alex Amber, who had retired from the Maxim restaurant in Paris, to a nearby village. He came for three days, looked around, and at the end he said: 'Show me your base sauces.' I showed him. He threw everything in the trash, and said: 'When you know how to make a base sauce, I can advise you.'

We closed for ten days, and my wife and I went to Paris. We lived in a shabby hotel, and every day we went to the library and copied old cookbooks into notebooks. When we returned, I worked from the notes. That's how I learned the basics. The old man came back, checked, and said: 'Now, I can help.'

In 1975 we moved to the current building – and a year later we received the second star. I was stuck again. The selection expanded, the pace changed, but I didn’t know how to connect the dots. I met a second chef, André Gio, who was quite famous in the XNUMXs, and then retired. A generous man, who gave me all his knowledge. I traveled to him, occasionally, for two or three days, and wrote down things he said. He gave me culinary culture. I returned each time with dozens of new ideas.

At that time I started doing my own experiments – in recent years we have reached three hundred a year. That was the big adventure. For example, in 1975 I decided to decorate the Christmas and New Year's Eve dinners with sugar roses, instead of real flowers.

A neighboring confectioner, whom I asked to show me how to process sugar, told me that it was out of fashion, and a waste of time. I opened a book, took a rose, unfolded it on the table – and copied it. I made many mistakes, burned my fingers, and in the end I made three hundred sugar roses and four baskets. I worked like that all my life.

When I started making foie gras, I read books, and in order to understand the concepts and methods, I wasted a lot of material. My ignorance spurred me on a lot. To this day, I know nothing. But starting in 1974, I already had some kitchen experience, I was able to focus more on studying, and about ten years ago I started to put together everything I had learned, and make my own kitchen. It took me ten years, fifteen hours a day. In 1984, I received the third star and the highest grade in the rubbers, which for years were tough on us.

In 1979, we moved to Vazla. We were lucky enough to buy an old house cheaply, next to the basilica. I thought I was an atheist, but as soon as I moved there, I realized I was an agnostic. People find it hard to understand, but living up there changed our character, our mutual affection, and our lives.

Joy of life, generosity, giving to others, faith in humanity – which were not in us, or which we did not feel, awakened in us. Then, perhaps by chance, my personal cuisine began to take shape, what you ate at my place, a cocktail and synthesis of what I learned from my teachers, combined with my lifestyle here.

My teachers taught me simplicity, to prioritize the taste of the product. To minimize processing and additions in order to satisfy the palate, which is distorted by the smells of the city, the scents of women, and cigarettes. I tried to recreate what some did in contemporary painting – to remove the clutter. Today, not every leaf is painted. The focus is mainly on the stain of the wood, the stain of green.

I live in a village, close to the land, in complete osmosis with the seasons, and try to formulate recipes based on the concept of French cuisine that a local resident might have. For example, oysters. The villager will only eat oysters cold. Peasants know how hard life is, and they don't throw anything away: you can't pour out the water in the shell. The peasant knows that you eat oysters with vinegar, shallots, and white wine.

I made a mixture: from the wine, vinegar, and onion, I whipped up a sauce, added an oyster to it to enhance the flavor, poured it into a shell, placed the live oyster, and made a creamy sauce with the seawater. It was too heavy. I replaced the sauce with frozen: I have always loved frozen. It is clear, as elegant as the local architecture.

Kromski – ‘skewered butter’ – originated in an 18th-century Polish recipe. It was used as a decoration. Butter was sculpted into the shape of a fruit, coated in breadcrumbs and dipped in deep oil. Then a hole was made, and the melted butter was poured out. We applied the recipe as a sauce for asparagus, with herb butter. At the end of the season, I looked for a different filling. I tried anchovies, oysters, and finally foie gras. All searches, of course, are initially on paper.

I build a recipe the way an architect draws a plan. That's how I arrived at a limited creamy sauce, with port wine, foie gras and truffles, bound with a little gelatin. Cold, it hardens. Cut a cube, roll in breadcrumbs, dip in boiling butter – an outer crust forms, the inside melts – and eat within the next sixty seconds. It explodes in your mouth.

Marc Mano's Culinary Philosophy

Mano's cuisine is well-reasoned and rooted in the culture, lifestyle, and history of the region and his country. For example, in the bicentennial year of the revolution, he created a dish that included partridge – and a baby merganser alongside it. Why?

The Melchilon on the plate is a historical nod – to spell out the word 'king' in the bicentennial year of the revolution. And most importantly – a culinary innovation: replacing the traditional kelli with foie gras with roasted, un-drained chick, which serves as a spice: it gives a slight bitterness that suits the game meat.

Where do the chicks come from? A secret. God is with me. With a little luck, it lasts two, three months and is over. That's our originality. More secrets? When you get the best cheese, the best carrots – you keep the sources a closely guarded secret. This year, my gardener got white beets, which existed in the 19th century. I asked for exclusivity for a year.

There are other secrets, which he calls “culinary theorems”: they have allowed him to develop his own personal cuisine. “For example – to combine a product that grows or lives above the ground or water, with a product that grows below them. Beef, always with potatoes, carrots and turnips. Fish, always with rice, spinach or cauliflower.

Second theorem: Never exceed 80 degrees when cooking. Above – the water begins to boil and evaporate, and the aromas fade. When frying, 80 degrees in the middle of the product.

Sole fish, for example: 130 degrees outside, and as soon as I think the heat is penetrating, I remove it from the heat and wrap the fish for a few minutes so the heat penetrates.

Estimating heat is part of professionalism. I remember that my teacher, Gio, knew how to taste with his eye. I was amazed. I tried very hard to learn this – and indeed: you ‘see’ whether a sauce is salty, peppery, rich in garlic, by its oiliness, its shine, the way it spreads on the spoon. I say: ‘It’s missing pepper!’ The cooks reply: ‘But you didn’t taste it!’ I taste, and it’s accurate. Sometimes, I’m wrong.

Third theorem: Trying to return to childhood flavors. For example, ice cream with a slush flavor – the slush takes us back to school. People are very sensitive to childhood memories. I also think that you should cook with the idera, or bone, because that's where the flavor is, and that's also what allows you to eat with your hands.

It's important to use your hands, otherwise you won't enjoy it! A true gastronome eats many things with his hands, where a fork won't help. Only he will eat asparagus with his hands!

He also came to wine culture through marriage.

Before that – to this day, sometimes – I drank orangeade. My father-in-law was a distiller of alcohol, and was keen on wine. He preferred a good bottle to a painting or a piece of furniture. When I asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage, he agreed – on the condition that I study wines. He took me on tours of the wine regions, taught me to drink, to taste, to get to know them.

The family was always nice to us, but they didn't trust us – they never lent us money. So we had to live off our own labor, and for years we couldn't build a proper wine cellar. We worked on short stocks for immediate consumption. I don't have any famous wines, because my cellar has no history.

The secret to success

Such a remote restaurant – dozens of kilometers from the highway, in an area with no train, no nearby airport, no industry, in other words, no business meals – needs a solid clientele.

We made sure to keep the local clientele, who helped us rise step by step, and thanks to whom we have existed from the very beginning. For their sake, in 1977 we established a club of 'Friends of Marc Manu'. About 2,000 people, living within a fifty-kilometer radius, have the privilege of eating every weekday, lunch and dinner, at a special price of 300 francs, including unlimited wine.

We have created a core of kind supporters, thanks to whom we survive in the winter and maintain contact with the sources. The teacher and the gardener, the fireman and the doctor are a third of the customers – not from the business cycle, of course. The rest – equally between foreigners and Parisians and travelers, or people who come especially.

Customers remain loyal, and we are forced to leave on the menu, over the years, certain hits that people would be disappointed if they came from afar and didn't get them.

It bothers me, because it symbolizes that I'm getting old – and also getting tired of repeating the same thing over and over again. A recipe stays at peak fitness for not much more than a year. Recipes change on their own, become less tasty, and have to be redeveloped.

When I downloaded the Kromsky last year, they demanded I return it. Oysters in the freezer, roasted poti in meat juice, onions and mushrooms, and a few others – they are essential hits. The rest, new. Of the three hundred recipes that are tested every year, thirty are implemented.

The fried sole with edible hydra is a new recipe. I developed it for the dinner, to which I invited all my fellow three-star chefs. It will be a classic: the combination of simplicity and provocation will please. The idea is not mine, but my wife's. As a hopeless misogynist, it is difficult for me to admit this, but since I only love my wife...

We were talking about a recipe I wanted to try, ‘Sol Colbert,’ where you take out the flounder before cooking and make the stock with it, and she said, ‘Why don’t you fry it?’ I remembered that my uncle, who was a poacher, caught a fish full of flounder in our stream. He would slice the fish and deep fry it – the flounder was edible, and the fish was very tasty.

It's true that serving edible eel alongside the fish is a game, but cooking every day is simply depressing. Only if you have fun while doing it is it fascinating. The chick, the eel, the duck squeezer on the table (a device that allows you to squeeze out the bone marrow and use it to thicken the sauce), the Kromsky, everything is a game. If I don't enjoy it, I'd rather go to the Riviera, or fish, and come back at the end of the week to collect the money. I also love cooking - it's giving, giving happiness to others.

But not all customers are happy, not all of them know how to have fun. Sometimes, there are even incidents.

Once an American came, sat alone and ordered a large gastronomic menu. When he reached the meat dish, the head waiter asked him: 'Did you like it so far?' 'No, it was disgusting!' He replied with a heavy American accent. We made him a second menu, from the beginning. He ate, and said: 'It was even more disgusting!' He got up, went to a nearby table, and said: 'Do you agree with me that the food here is not good!' And the people replied to him: 'To our taste, it is wonderful. Don't disturb us.'

A second story was with people who really annoyed my wife. When they arrived, two of them were not feeling well. They were given a room, Françoise took care of them. When they went down to eat, they rejected everything. They spoke rudely. This infuriated my wife – sometimes it's hard to bear – and she smashed the Kromsky in their faces. She did well! We got them out. After a while we came to the United States, and we read in the Los Angeles Times: 'Don't visit Manu, the landlady is dangerous!'

Marc and Françoise have a day and a half of free time in the middle of the week: the restaurant is open every weekend. One morning a week they set aside for reading. They write down any ideas that come to mind.

I read, for example, that spinach goes well with lemon. That gave me ideas: spinach in sweetened lemon peel. It's great, takes the bitterness out of spinach! There's no vegetable that can compare to it. Now excuse me, I have to go to Paris: as someone who was 'Chef of the Year' last year, I have to award the title to one of my colleagues, at a ceremony to be held on Eiffel Tower.

This is the story of Marc and Françoise Manu, which began with love, and continues with love.

The first supper

With the aperitif of the day, champagne in strawberry juice with a drop of Cointreau and Grand Marnier, homemade appetizers were served: live oysters stuffed with natural sauce and sea foam, and Kromski – oh, a divine delicacy!

The meal was very close to the rustic, primal flavors. Foie gras with lentils. Like Michel Laurent's wonderful boudin, another "folk" dish. But instead of the pork rump in the original recipe, whole foie gras enriches the lentils and garden vegetables with all its juices and aromas.

They slice it for you at the table, in two or three servings. Then, a whole sole fish, fried, served with nut butter, and with the halibut – fried, crispy, edible. Great. Between courses, so that I wouldn't get bored, Meno sent butterflies to me from the kitchen: for example, a plate of wonderful wild mushrooms, sautéed and quite.

The main course: young partridge, accompanied not by the traditional breadsticks with foie gras, but by a whole, baked chick of a pheasant, whose head you whip and shred, as a slightly bitter condiment for the game. A red wine, Noy Saint-Georges, is an excellent accompaniment.

“We opened a fine wine for you,” Mano tells me. “We know you like red.” The bird of the sky carried the voice… And yet, on this journey through Burgundy, from Chablis and Marceau and Puy-Poissy, I made peace with white wines.

For dessert, surprising ice creams: one peppery, with banana and passion fruit aromas, and another with a cherry flavor. Manu likes to recreate the childhood flavors of his diners.

The next day, after the best breakfast I've ever had in France, so rich that it's hard to say what it didn't include, I moved straight to the aperitif, and the appetizers I couldn't part with, those wonderful Kromskis.

I returned to Mano after a few years, and he gave me a temptingly graphic description of his new dishes, pure in the rural tradition. My mouth was watering, but since I had booked a table at another restaurant in the area, I had to give up. He was simply shocked that I had resisted the temptation – but I promised to return.

And I did, one evening, to taste in the garden, with the house aperitif, the fried snails, wrapped in a batter of garden herbs, and the wonderful tiny appetizers, and Kromski, of course, and then a wonderful vegetable cake, and some of those wonderful oysters, which were not removed from the menu.

I will return to his menu and the temptation of his rustic winter menu, which is lacking in my culinary education – if I can get there: When I called to congratulate him on Rosh Hashanah 1997, he told me that it was snowing, all the roads were blocked, and all the customers had canceled their orders. A difficult area, the heart of Burgundy.

The cover photo shows Marc Manu meeting journalist Dalia Penn Lerner.