‘Cultures Get Mixed’

You are known for inventing nouvelle cuisine. How did that start?
A few other chefs and I started nouvelle cuisine in France in the early 1970s, before my first trip to Japan. It was about shorter cooking time, less sauce, less fat, etc. A few years later I went to Japan for the first time, in the mid to late 1970s. When I went to Japan I felt I had stepped into a new world. That's when I realized our inspiration had come from Japan. When a civilization dominates the world, its cuisine is spread too. Now, it's China and Asia [which are dominant world forces]; in the past it has been the United States [and] Europe. I understood then that Japan was expanding and spreading influence. When Rome dominated the world 2,000 years ago, everyone ate Roman food. At each period in a civilization, there have been times when a dominant culture is very influential. It's a sign of the times. It used to be fashionable for women to be fat. Then it became fashionable for them to be slim, at about the same time that our cooking changed. With nouvelle cuisine, there was a spirit of lightness and slimness that corresponds with the times. In the beginning of the 1970s, when we started making "bare" dishes, we concentrated on the products. We were the first to look for farmers and ask them for fresh, good produce. A researcher takes ideas from the air and gives them to his contemporaries. If it works, it's because people want them. The world also became more feminized. We all know that women make the decisions and that they're the stronger sex, but they are kind enough to let us believe the opposite. So when a woman says to her husband, "Let's go eat here," the decision is made. Women also started having a more important role socially. They weren't just staying home taking care of the kids and their husbands anymore. Women started working outside the home. In the early 1980s I went to a conference in Rome and said that macho Latino culture was dying, that men no longer held the power. So we did everything to seduce women, and French cuisine became more feminized.

Michelin gave Tokyo eight three-stars and 140 one- and two-stars. Doesn't that signify something?
I'm not surprised about Japan's stars. As I already said, the population of Japan is [much] bigger than that of France. Also, I know Japan, which has serious chefs and gourmets who are very sensitive to quality. Japanese cuisine is all about purity, and I think that their notions about health play a role. Today everyone is thinking about health. Japan has always had quality restaurants. The Michelin guide didn't exist in Japan before. But if you search for good restaurants in Japan, you will find them.

Do the French have anything to learn from the Japanese?
The Japanese are very sensitive to the primary product. Knowledge of fresh produce is equally important in France. When you go to Tokyo's main fish market, it's ultraclean and doesn't smell. It's the same way in France. But it's not the case everywhere [in other countries]. Japanese cuisine, for me, is and always has been modern. I will say that I think that French chefs are more creative. A simple, bland flavor in Japan is considered a quality in Japan. The French don't like blandness. For a French person blandness is considered a flaw. Who is the judge? You can't compare two totally separate things. Journalists are always trying to create a polemic or put everything in the same basket, and life is not like that. There is no battle between Japanese and French cuisines. We find inspiration in Japanese cooking and vice versa. The difference is in the technique of executing a particular dish. I love tempura and I make a tempura in my own way. I also make sushi in my own way. We make a dish with our French or Japanese soul. Cultures get mixed. Why try to set cultures up against one another? Who cares? That's reality.

© 2008