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The French-Basque chef Hélène Darroze (Mont-de-Marsan, 1967) is one of the true living legends of international cuisine, awarded six Michelin stars: three at The Connaught restaurant in London; two at Marsan par Hélène Darroze in Paris and one more at Hélène Darroze à Villa La Coste, in Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, in Provence.
Darroze also has two other restaurants in Paris, Jòia par Helene Darroze and the gastronomic burger restaurant Jòia Bun par Helene Darroze. But his aura continues to grow: this past June he made his debut at the helm of two of the restaurants of the luxurious Moroccan hotel Royal Mansour Marrakech, La Table and La Grande Table Marocaine.
The Royal Mansour Marrakech is the ultimate expression of luxury hospitality in Morocco. Owned by King Mohammed VI himself, it is the only five-star establishment inside the ramparts of the “red city”, just a five-minute walk from the medina or Jemaa-el-Fna square. There are no suites or rooms in this hotel, but 53 of those typical residences called “riads”, the rooms of which are arranged around an inner courtyard with a fountain.
An establishment of these characteristics had to have a range of restaurants in keeping with the luxury it boasts and offers, and among the restaurants that have opened this summer are two whose cuisine has been designed by Darroze, one with French cuisine, La Table, and the other with Moroccan cuisine, La Grande Table Marocaine.
What do you like best about the cuisine or what is the cuisine you like best?
I’m curious about everything, no doubt, but if I talk about my cooking, I would say that it’s really about the product. My main concern is to find the best product. That’s why I have a loyal relationship with my suppliers, because that’s how I choose the best products.
Then it’s just about putting my emotion, my memories, my life on the plate and around the products. Everything I have learnt or what I have experienced in life or in the journeys I have made. It’s a mixture of what I have inside me and the product I put on the plate. I imagine that on this occasion you have found the perfect mix between your cuisine… let’s call it European, and Moroccan… In the French restaurant, of course. It’s what everyone expects: a French restaurant with French cuisine. So I will continue to do French cuisine and work as I do in my other restaurants. But the Moroccan restaurant is a big challenge for me. A very interesting challenge.
First I have to understand Moroccan culture and food, and then I will put my sensibility and my personality. What I will offer will be, I think, a mixture of respect and my own personality, because what I have been asked for is also clear: it is a Moroccan restaurant with Moroccan cuisine, so I have to cook with their dishes, so that the diners can say: “it’s Moroccan”.
Does anyone work with you to advise you on Moroccan culinary culture?
In the end it is me who creates the menu and the dishes, that goes without saying. And I’m very excited because it’s my turn to learn something new, although I bring all my experience in these things that I’ve been learning. At the moment, the first thing I have done is to try to meet as many people as possible to learn from them. For example, I met a French-Moroccan cook in Paris, Fatéma Hal, from whom I learned a lot.
First I read her, because she has written some books, but I also learned from her, because I met her and she told me that the next time we meet she will take me to a souk where there is street food and I will meet with her women who cook in a very traditional way. But every time I meet someone who has a connection to Morocco, I ask “Do you know someone who can teach me?” and I have already had more than one fruitful contact. A few days ago, a friend of mine told me about someone from Tunisia and I think I’m going to learn about traditional Tunisian cooking as well. It’s all about relationships and the people I will meet and learn from. Exactly the same way that thirty and forty years ago I learned from my family and other cooks.
It’s not that I’m starting from scratch, but now I’m going back to the learning phase, although, of course, I’ll also put in a bit of my technique, of course, which is different from Morocco’s. But I assure you that I want to respect tradition. But I assure you that I want to respect tradition. For example, I don’t know if it will be possible or not, but I would love to build a wood-fired oven in the kitchen of the Moroccan restaurant, to cook bread as it is traditionally cooked. I want to go back to traditional things and I think if there is a place to do that in a Moroccan restaurant, it is here. So I will try to go back to tradition and to the cuisine du terroir, because I’m sure you don’t cook the same in the north and in the south of Morocco and you don’t cook the same in Fez as in Marrakech. But, I repeat, I have to learn.
You talk a lot about learning, but I’ve also heard you say that cooking is in your DNA. Is there something innate about being a cook?
I am the fourth generation of a family of cooks. When I was very little I was at home with my mother and she was cooking a sauce and she saw me sticking my finger in it to taste it. And she said to me: “you’ve never seen me do that; I never touch it”. It was instinctive… We are twelve grandchildren of my grandfather, who was a great cook, and three of us are in the kitchen. You could almost say that I was born in a frying pan, in a restaurant kitchen. From the beginning, I loved spending time in my grandfather’s kitchen in the restaurant. I loved to see in the morning how the suppliers arrived with fresh milk, with fresh eggs, with asparagus…
In Morocco, and indeed in all Arab countries, you cannot cook pork. What changes have you had to make in your kitchen for this reason?
Not many. The main thing is not to cook with pork. And I haven’t really changed anything. What I cooked here yesterday or today is what I could have cooked in London or Paris. It’s just that I can’t use that product, but we find substitutes; for example, I’ve created a chorizo based on duck, so it’s not a big problem.
I don’t know if you have problems in your restaurant in London, because my experience, living in London, is that there is not much variety of fish in the market. How do you deal with that?
Fish is not a problem in London because I bring it from Scotland. For me, the problem is more with vegetables and fruit. You don’t have citrus fruits there, so you have to import them. But nowadays the situation is better every year and even every day, I would say. I started in London fifteen years ago and I can assure you that the variety and quality of produce has increased a lot in that time. But they have their climate and their soil and you can’t fight against that.
These two restaurants you have opened at the Royal Mansour Marrakech are new, so they don’t count, but you have one restaurant with three Michelin stars, one with two and one with one, and two more restaurants in Paris with no stars. Are the judges crazy or are there really so many differences between each of your establishments?
Of course there are big differences in all of them! There is a common ethic and common values: the value of the product, emotion, sustainability… all these are the pillars of my cuisine. But after that, I don’t make the same cuisine in Provence as I do in London. I cook with the same spirit and the same beliefs, but on the plate it translates in completely different ways.
In Provence everything revolves around vegetable produce because we are lucky enough to have an orchard next to the restaurant and we have small suppliers who supply us with fabulous vegetables and fruit and so on. In Provence, 80 or 90% of the produce comes to us from about 200 kilometres around. In London we don’t have those products. In London, you are in a palace: the Connaught is the Connaught, but the way of cooking… No, it’s not the way of cooking but the way of creating the dishes is more sophisticated. And in Marsan, in Paris, it’s about my roots and my family. Marsan is the name of the region where I was born [Mont-de-Marsan] and it means a lot to me.
It’s about the family and the Southwest, the Basque Country… Here, in Marrakech, it will be a different story. I remember when I was awarded the third Michelin star in London and the second in Paris, when they offered me this job, they said to me: “the extraordinary thing about you is that I don’t eat in London what I eat in Paris”. And that person said to me: “keep it up, because what we love about you is that you have one philosophy but with many expressions. I imagine that if you visit all my restaurants, one after the other, you will notice that there is something that will remind you that I am in all of them? I hope so, at least! But it will also be completely different, and that’s what’s exciting!
