France - Alexandre Couillon

[bunniefuu]

Hey. It's Alex from La Marine.

Can you please call me back?
The scallops are no good.

This is not what we asked for.

If you can't get them, then it's no deal.

These are unacceptable.

These are sh*t.

Okay? Don't forget
that they are in season now.

Thank you.

We will not make the scallops.
They're sh*t.

The scallops is sh*t.

I don't think I'm a perfectionist.

I just want...

to show the world we exist.

The first time someone told me

there's a chef
who's called Alexandre Couillon,

I said, "Poor guy!"

In France...

A couillon is a moron.

And this guy is in Noirmoutier.

I was skeptical.

Noirmoutier?
Can it possibly be good?

Of course I was skeptical.

Noirmoutier has survived in a cocoon.

It's like the edge of the world.

The Gois...

separates Noirmoutier from the mainland.

Before there was a bridge,

the Gois was the only passage
that allowed people to get to Noirmoutier.

And it was dangerous because,

when the tide rises,
the Gois gets flooded.

This allows people from Noirmoutier

to feel like they are
separate from the world.

It's a region that's not very reputed
for its gastronomy.

Before, In Noirmoutier,
there were no restaurants with stars.

This part of France
doesn't get much media attention.

But Alexandre Couillon
is something of a magician.

If you give a sardine to Alexandre,
a simple fish,

he'll do something extraordinary with it.

The challenge was
to become known,

to attract patrons
from outside his region.

He took the challenge to stay here...

to say, "This is my land.

This is my sea.
This is my home.

It may take some time...

but I believe in my vision.

This is my seafood universe.
It expresses me."

When my staff asks me
how to create a dish,

I say, "It's simple. You go sit on a rock,
look around and think."

The island contributes tremendously

to the creativity of the dishes we offer.

Why can't we try
an algae broth with shellfish?

Tomorrow, I could create a duck dish,

with beets, blueberry juice and chard.

Why not?

I dream.

When you go to Couillon,
you discover the magic of the sea.

Thin slices of mullet,

smoked in-house
with pine cones from Noirmoutier.

He stands out in the way
he presents his dishes...

like paintings.

It moves me, it makes me feel,
it surprises me.

He's trying to tell the story
of his island through his dishes.

He puts his land on the table.

This is a walk
in the Bois de la Chaize.

There's a homemade pine resin ice cream,

green tea biscuits to evoke the moss,
and chocolate sand to evoke the earth.

Have a nice stroll.

There is complete consistency
between his marine terroir

and the plate he delivers.

We know that we are in Noirmoutier.

- The sea is beautiful.
- Yes, you think?

Yes, I find it beautiful.

- I always find it beautiful.
- Yeah?

And you, Marie, do you find
the sea beautiful this evening?

Yes.

- A little rough, though.
- Yes.

After the rocks,
we will go down close to the boat.

- You remember where?
- Yes.

My entire family is
from Noirmoutier.

My parents, my grandparents,

and my great-grandparents
are all from here.

We are all from here.

My father was a sailor and fisherman.
My mother was a seamstress.

But when I was six,
my parents decided to buy a caf?,

and they named it La Marine.

It was a seasonal restaurant,
only open in July and August.

My mother was in the kitchen.
She did tourist cuisine.

Shellfish, soups, apple pies.

Very simple.

My father did the table service.

We didn't know anything.

We were a bit like Alexandre today...
thick-headed.

But those were very good years.

Nowadays,
you hear a lot of chefs saying,

"I do this job
because my grandmother cooked

and I was helping her peel apples."

But not me. Not me.

I was outside, living a kid's life.

When you're a child of the island...

it's a bit like being Tom Sawyer.

I was fishing.

I was riding my bike...

in the Bois de la Chaize.

I was picking fruit...

The island seemed big.

I was free.

The island of Noirmoutier...

is a very, very special place.

Hello.

- How's it going?
- Good. You?

Has he arrived?

We cannot be static.

We need movement
if we're going to advance.

I think it's important...

to think about how we can evolve

and introduce new techniques.

I thought I knew how to cook fish.

I also thought I knew
how to respect products.

I definitely want these.

Yes, these are nice.

I thought I knew a lot of things.

And then I went to Japan...

and I had a culinary shock.

Everything was alive.
It's a living cuisine.

And I said, "Wow!"

I learned to k*ll a fish
using the Ikejime method.

The Ikejime method is taking a live fish,

cutting part of its tail and head,

and then putting a piece of metal wire
into its spine

to instantly stop death.

We take out all the blood vessels
around the throat.

It's often the blood that spoils the fish.

So the flesh of the fish
stays very white...

perfect for sushi and raw fish.

But we don't serve sushi at La Marine,

so we decided to try cooking it instead.

The result was a fish with pearly flesh,

and a texture that's incomparable.

Going backwards is impossible.

We have to evolve.

This seafood has to be served hot.

It has to be hot when you put this in.

This is not really hot, it's medium.

Just like this, nothing more.

Couillon, in France,
is a very hard name to have.

Ever since I was little,
I was bullied because of my last name.

Kids called me stupid, dumbass,
stuff like that.

So, school wasn't my thing.

It was very hard for me.
I wanted to escape.

I became a dreamer.

Sitting at a desk all day,
doing nothing, listening to a teacher...

I didn't get the point.

When I see my old teachers,

they tell me,
"We never thought you'd make it this far."

I wasn't a good student.

We met in school.

We were in the same class.

In fact, I teased him at first.

She was more studious than me.

We became friends...

then we flirted...

and then we started going out.

And after that, we were always together.

It came totally naturally.

But in high school...

my mother was called
to the principal's office and told,

"We can't keep your son at our school.

He's daydreaming. He talks a lot.
He's always fidgeting.

He doesn't pay attention."

I needed to do something
to channel all this energy,

to find a vocation...

for C?line.

When I was 17,
one day I saw a television show

about a chef in Brittany...

Michel Fornareso.

And I decided to knock on his door...

and ask him for a job.

He looked me in the eye and said,
"Show me what you can do.

Make an apple pie."

I was lucky.
I had seen my mother making apple pies.

So, I made an apple pie.

It wasn't very good,

but for some reason...

he tells me,
"Okay. You can stay."

The truffles in the back,
Sylvain, please!

But when I was a teenager,
I had a tendency to talk back.

I was a smartass.

I didn't know the rules of the kitchen.

Come on, M?gane. Let's go.

And after a few months, the chef grabs me,
pushes me against the wall,

and tells me, "I'm the boss.

You listen to what I say,
and it will work."

He was a very tough chef.

But I needed this.

He taught me
what the kitchen world is about.

And something clicked.

I said to myself, "This is what
I really want to do with my life.

This is the job I want."
It's true.

All this thanks to an apple pie.

Four seashells, three oysters,
one squid, five scallops,

five whiting, four lobsters.

If they're big, use one for two
and use the claws.

Please.

Five guinea fowls and desserts.

Four, four, five.

Let's go.

The biggest challenge here...

is keeping up with the chef.

He's relentless.

We're not a conventional restaurant.

When I get here in the morning,
I don't know what I'm going to do.

I say to my team...

"Today we're going to do this, that.
I brought this. We'll do this."

Everybody starts working...
Thirty minutes later,

I'm like, "No, let's change it all."

There is a change.

We'll need the big plates.

It's one,
one cut in half with the pincers...

as it's in the first...

They think the chef is crazy.

We could become stagnant
and fall into a routine,

but that's not interesting.

This is the resin.

It's pretty, right?

He doesn't feel the need

to follow the rules
imposed by other chefs.

There isn't a hierarchy.
It's not the army.

Everyone finds their place.

When I'm asked,
"Why do you work like this?"

I say, "It's part of who we are.

We make our own rules
when it comes to our food."

Okay.

That's it.
You wrote that down?

Working in a kitchen
is a very difficult job.

It's a guy's world,
and it's a pretty macho place.

- Ready?
- Yes.

I'll keep some for later.

Start mixing, but only with one hand.

The other hand is on the bowl.

It's harder for a girl
to work in the kitchen.

When you peel an apple,
it's important to keep a round shape.

And that worries me a little, as a father.

Because my daughter Emma,
who's turning 13,

wants to do this for a living.

I can't imagine my reaction

if she calls me one day to tell me
that she's been bullied at work.

I'm careful, and I go like this...

Today, in my kitchen, there are 50%,
sometimes even 60% women.

Bam.

Awesome.

Mocking someone in my kitchen
based on their looks,

because the person is different...

Not in my kitchen.
Not possible.

And you're going to add
the sugar very slowly.

- Like this?
- Yeah.

It's going to caramelize on top,
and the butter will melt.

But I think Emma has a strong personality.

So I think she'll be okay.

Go ahead, put it inside.

Awesome!
Up top.

Shall we clean up?

By 1998, I was working at Michel Gu?rard,
three Michelin stars.

My father calls me and tells me,
"We are going to sell La Marine.

But you could take over."
And I'm like, "No...

That was not our plan.

We don't have experience."

I had all these dreams
of working with great chefs.

Noirmoutier was a gastronomic wasteland.

He says, "Too bad."

But then C?line and I look at each other,
and I say, "Wait.

Imagine if one day,
when people look at the map of France,

they will point to Noirmoutier and say,
'There is something happening here.'"

I think when you're young, it's necessary
to have a certain pugnacity...

and to say, "Why not?"

So, C?line and I
made a seven-year commitment.

I told her,
"If it works after seven years,

I will continue.

If not, I will take my knives and go."

When we got here, we had a dream
to make a gastronomic restaurant.

But customers weren't looking for that.

The first seasons
were very, very difficult.

The island was a touristic place.

We had a name plaque outside.

It said, "Alexandre Couillon."

People would pass by
and laugh about it,

point at it, take photos with it
as if it were an attraction.

I would tell them,
"Buzz off. You don't know a thing!"

At the end of August,
the tourists disappeared.

There wasn't a soul.

All the other restaurants' shutters
were closed.

There were times we had all these
fresh products, but no customers.

We had doubts.

We were living above the restaurant.

We didn't have a dime in our pocket.

And every night we would say...

"How are we going
to make it through winter?"

And then we had our first daughter, Emma.

She was literally born in the kitchen.

I was cooking
with her in her crib next to me.

And I remember thinking...

"We're not two anymore, we're three."

We had to make ends meet.

We needed to change our cuisine.

So we decided to make traditional food.

There was no more gastronomy.

And we had to impose ourselves.

Throughout the year, we were always open.

Always, always, always.

Every day, we would open up
and turn on the lights,

just to show that we exist.

It's what we had to do
to impose a respect for our work.

It was very hard for us.

We hardly thought about ourselves
during the first years

because we had so much work.

I was alone in the kitchen.

I was running all over,
checking the time,

taking out the trash, cleaning...

And we worked like that for seven years,

hoping that one day
we might get our heads above water.

It's important to promote our products,
to show they exist.

We don't work with products
that come from far away.

And that's why our artisans
are so important.

These artisans can easily sell
their products.

But the really passionate ones,

they do what we do,
they always try to improve.

These are beautiful, not too salty.

They're really nice.

Like with Raymond...

I wanted a large oyster
for a specific dish.

But most people prefer small oysters.

Yeah, these are great.

But of course,
if there is bigger, we'll take them.

But these are beautiful.

So, I suggested that he put some
in a pool so that they would grow.

These oysters are one year old.
Their growth is incredible.

It's very important for us
to have these conversations.

We have set the bar high, but we have to.

These are still growing.

- They're big.
- Yes, not bad.

All of this contributes
to the island's activity, to its economy.

...400 kilometers
of France's Atlantic coast polluted.

...thousands of liters
of crude oil spilling into the ocean.

...one of France's worst ever
environmental catastrophes.

In 2000, unfortunately,

a catastrophe occurred
in the Atlantic Coast.

An oil tanker crashed
and spilled its oil.

The oil spill was called Erika.

The oil slick affected everything,
damaging the shellfish and the sea life.

For several months,
we couldn't get any shellfish.

A few years later even,
when Emma was growing up,

she was playing in the sand on the beach,
and it made her hands all black.

It's shocking.
Can you imagine?

It's dangerous.
It's serious.

It's very important that we pay attention
to what we have

under our feet and in the ocean.

A fish jumps...

and it lands in a garden.

And it proceeds to take a walk.

Why not?

Sometimes I see him
wandering in the garden

and I think he is lost.

But, quite the opposite,
he knows exactly what he wants.

the size of the vegetables, the flowers...

We could use the whole potato,
even its skin.

Imagine a bouillon,
incorporating something wild...

And my job is to try to give him
whatever he needs.

I think our soil, close to the sea,

gives a salty taste

that enhances the flavor
of the vegetables.

It's my first time in 25 years as a farmer

that I have the opportunity
to work directly with a chef...

and a chef with stars at that.

I am thinking about something special,
a life on that plate...

Yes.

It allows me to put forward
all my knowledge about products,

to help him reach
a certain quality and taste.

Having our own garden,
our own gardener and our own vegetables,

has changed my way of seeing things.

At the end of our sixth year...

a journalist came in.

It was mid-October.

Everything was closed.

And he asked me,
"How do you do it?"

I told him, "We made a commitment
to stay here for seven years."

"But will you be here
the year after that?"

I told him,
"I don't think we're going to stay."

He said, "That's too bad.

I believe something good
can happen for you."

And three months later...

we had already decided to leave...

and we found ourselves crossing the bridge
on our way home.

And we heard on the radio,
"This year the Michelin guide is out.

And La Marine restaurant
takes a Michelin star."

We were on the verge of tears.

"What's happening to us?"

When you get a star,
you question everything.

I looked at C?line and said,
"What should we do?"

Since we opened, we had been doing
very traditional cuisine.

But our dream was always to make
creative, contemporary cuisine.

This was our chance
to build something different.

And that's where the idea
of demolishing everything began...

to start from scratch, to say,
"We are going to build a real restaurant."

After the first star,
everything changed.

La Marine became futuristic,
gastronomical, artistic...

It was a bit much.

We started to put
lots of things in the dishes,

with no particular construction.

We were trying to be different.

We tried tomato ice cream
with potato chips.

We made shallot orange jams,
tomato juice drinks...

We were doing all this in one dish.
It was ten dishes in one.

We were lost.

And then one day,

I asked an intern who just got here
to make a squid bouillon.

But I didn't explain it well,

so he kept them whole,
washed them and cut them.

And as a result, we had a broth
that was very black... very strong.

And it took me back...

to the oil on the beaches.

Erika.

And I thought, "Wow!"

We put an oyster in this black broth...

and served it on a white plate
like a black stain,

like oil in water.

I can still see the plate arrive
in front of me, white, immaculate,

and this strange black thing
without form in the center.

And I'm asking myself,
"What is this? What is he doing?"

I cut.

I take a bite.

And then I wipe away a tear.

And I ask C?line,
"May I have another one?"

Simplicity is
what gives us so much emotion.

The goal was to imagine

that there is no separation
between the sea and the kitchen.

That's what I was missing.

That is the path of the future.

We started to simplify the dishes...

to refocus our cuisine.

And in 2013...
we received a second star.

People started
to take an interest in us...

coming from far away to eat at La Marine.

He became the ambassador
of his island.

Thanks to Alexandre Couillon,

Noirmoutier has become
a culinary destination.

I think
I've already proved people wrong.

It is a semantic victory.

Today, when we say "Couillon,"
it means "smart."

As Voltaire once said,
"Happiness is cultivating your garden."

Our cuisine, it's the island.

It's the island of Noirmoutier.

Did you see that?

Look, a little blue boat.
Let's take a picture of it.

People didn't believe in us.

But we're still here.

If a third star comes, well, perfect.

But we are proud Couillons.

And that is what's important.