La Braisiere – Chef Jacques Faussat
As work on the current project — Chasing Stars: The Quest for Michelin Glory in France — continues, I'm revisiting photos made while in the restaurants and kitchens and interviewing a couple of dozen chefs.
Here is another mono set, from restaurant La Braisiere (since renamed Jacques Faussat), in the 17th Arrondissement of Paris, not far from Parc Monceau. (I struggled a bit with the lighting conditions.) Chef Faussat, one of our favourite chef personalities, would lose his star three years after these were shot, only to regain it this year (2020). Go, Chef!
Young Jacques loved to wander the woods and countryside around his family home, foraging for mushrooms and escargots to sell to local restaurants for pocket money. There was plenty of countryside to wander in — Gers, in southwestern France, is the most underpopulated region in all of Europe.
Even at the age of twelve he understood the importance of food. His mother and grandmother cooked a lot, there were always big meals with friends and family. Early in his life Jacques Faussat developed a sense of taste from the food they cooked and from the gardens they grew. He told his family he wanted to be a chef, he wanted to cook as his profession. But at that age no one took him seriously except his mother.
