Asnières-Sur-Seine, this Friday, July 4. Throughout the river, in the port of Van Gogh, several barges are moral. Some reveal to customers drinking Spritz under their umbrella. Others welcome families who came to try pizzas.
In one of them, Quentin Mauro, 26, hastened; The characteristics drawn, but a smile on the lips. “I’m doing a little,” he said. For forty -eight hours, the winner of the sixteenth season of Top Chef See journalists by moving every half hour, pass after M6 and before France 5, while continuing the services in its floating ephemeral restaurant.
This opening, after the transmission of the final, is one of this season’s profits, in addition to the control of 52,650 euros. Every night, from Tuesday to Friday, the young chef officiates in the kitchen and offers a tasting menu, in six stages, 95 euros. La Barcaza, in which the final was shot, belongs to Bitros Pas Parisiens, a group of ten directions in which Stéphane Rotenberg, presenter of the culinary competition invested.
There is no star … for now
From the announcement of his victory, everything has been linked very quickly. The young man, who thought “to move from the first Top Chef test on Paris’s roofs,” do you realize what you are living? “Not really, and it’s almost frustrating,” he admits. “After the big party for the transmission of the final, I had to go directly ‘to prepare the restaurant, look for the last team at 2 am, before finishing in the kitchen the next day at 8 am
Whether everything is perfect or almost, like your career in the season. Quentin Mauro appeared from the first minutes as one of the great favorites. Member of the Brigade of Glenn Viel, the cook distinguished himself by his audacity, as his dessert of “eggplant chocolate” or his “strata sauce.” But, their risks (too big) could be missing. It was his unequal actions that made him lose the star, the final reward of this season in association with the Michelin guide.
“It is very premature to have a star at 26, and even open a restaurant,” he says. Maybe it will be later. I want to create even more, look even further, put myself in danger and give everything. “
If you have not obtained a macaron, your very personal kitchen has not left anyone indifferent, neither the chefs nor the inspectors of the red guide present throughout the season.
Ultra Igresses Memories
Quentin Mauro is inspired by his family history and his Italian origins. The boy grew in Savoy, near the mountains. Raised by his grandparents, his learning of taste is done together with his grandmother, the now famous “Mado” to which he pays tribute throughout the season. “I learned the kitchen as a child, so necessarily all these memories are ultra observers, he explained. I grew up with a garden, with these vegetables that we chose. I remember very concentrated products in flavor, and it is about to express in my dishes.”
If cooking becomes the hobby of her childhood, she won it in adolescence. Quentin Mauro leaves the family home at age 14 to settle in Avignon and study at the hotel school. Far from his relatives, he saw a personal drama that year: his mother died of a brain tumor.
Marked by this disappearance, the young man encloses, continues his course to cook with fiercely and climbed the stairs one by one. Trained next to the three stars Laurent Little in Annecy, then he went to Lyon being a star’s board before taking control of the Bonhomie Parisino restaurant. And now, the famous barge.
Cooked tomato for 72 hours
From his childhood, Quentin Mauro will not say any word during the interview. His dishes will speak for him. During the eighth week, its creation entitled “Personal Destruction” marks the season: it transcribes, on a dish, the agitation caused by the death of his mother.
Saying your memories and feelings through tastes is a guide that the young prodigy is established. As his “sunny tomato”, which he offers his barge to the letter. “In my grandparents, we choose the tomatoes, we make you age two days in the stone before making a sauce, remember. I try to restore this illusion of hot tomato, with a rotten tomato visual, if I can afford!”
What about the recipe? “Have you ever seen a magician who revealed his towers?” He jokes, with a children’s air. In the center of the plate, a cooked tomato is found for 72 hours to 36 degrees. Beluga lenses blown lens, is adorned with a confit lemon paste, a caramel of tomatoes, a celery bark, another tomatoes and one last algae. In the palate, we can imagine the sugar and the umami of the tomato, allowed by slow cooking at low temperature, revived by the salinity of the algae and the lemon confited.
A project restaurant?
Between the final of March, the proclamation of the winner in May and the transmission in early July, the chef had very little time to prepare for the opening of the restaurant. But, nothing destabilizing. “There are dishes that came out at once, which have never been tested before, it is a bit of my specialty! He throws. But, these are dishes that I had in mind for a long time that I wanted to create or express. I still have many other ideas, I have three four notebooks full of ideas that come.” It is not necessary to say that other dishes to the letter: next week, it intends to offer others.
With only twenty roofs, its restaurant open from July 3 to August 31 is already complete. The places were taken by assault even before the transmission of the final. Try if you require public enthusiasm. “It’s a bit impressive, but it’s great pressure,” he says. “Because that means everyone is waiting for you in the turn.”
After this ephemeral restaurant and “two or three days of license”, Quentin Mauro is thinking of opening its own establishment and continuing to affirm. “I would still like to pull the thread of my kitchen, that I am in the process of finding and that I like it a lot,” he explains. And then, I’m only 26 years old, so it’s time to try many experiences, without looking for comfort. “
Source: BFM TV
