At Work With Alexandre Cammas

When the powers that be at Michelin recently anointed Tokyo as the gastronomic capital of the world with 11 three-star restaurants, the news was met with a Gallic shrug back in Paris.

After all, it’s not the first time the French claim to culinary supremacy has come under threat. Molecular gastronomy by way of Spain has been making noise for a few years now. New York’s dining scene remains as strong as ever.

But haute-cuisine temples aren’t the only kind of restaurants suffering in France, some say. Articles in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have pointed to the plight of the French café and portrayed the bistro as a dying breed. C’est vrai?

“If you’re looking for pot-au-feu, maybe,” says Alexandre Cammas, co-founder and editor of Le Fooding, a restaurant guide and grassroots culinary movement that has emerged as a cultural force to be reckoned with in a country that takes its food very, very seriously.

While most Parisians will reluctantly agree that the locals-only bistro complete with zinc bar and grandmère in the kitchen is hard to come by, chefs like Grégory Marchand of Frenchie and Iñaki Aizikiparte of Le Chateaubriand have rejuvenated the idea with neo-bistros embracing tradition without being bogged down by it.

As part of the new guard of food critics, Cammas is a good man to ask. He started Le Fooding as a guide for Nova magazine in 1998 and started publishing a stand-alone guide after the magazine folded.

Cammas was working as a food writer at the time for the French daily Libération and wanted to capture “le goût de l’époque,” or a taste of the times, in an annual guide destined for the coffee-table. For the title, he finally settled on “Le Fooding,” an amalgamation of ‘Food’ and ‘Feeling.’

The guide was there when established chefs like Alain Ducasse and Yves Camdeborde started moving away from the “more dramatic, classical forms” of cuisine to open smaller places with an emphasis on the food they wanted to cook.

Ducasse expanded Parisian palates with new international flavors when he opened Spoon off the Champs-Elysées. Meanwhile, Camdeborde cooked at La Bigarrade before opening Le Comptoir du Relais near Odéon, a bistro serving Béarnaise fare which is currently booked through September. To capture the new zeitgeist, the buzzword “bistronomie” was coined in a Le Fooding editorial meeting.

“We were the first people to say there wasn’t only one good taste…to say the Michelin taste wasn’t the best in the world,” he says. Instead of the oft-criticized star system, Le Fooding favors words and phrases like “Feeling,” “Fais-moi mal,” and “Trop Bon” - some of which escape translation. Cammas knows he can never budge the ubiquitous red guides off their pedestal in France, but Le Fooding isn’t limited to the publishing world.

The brand has also expanded with food festivals with all of its P.R. and production done in house. Their most recent bacchanal, “Les Incorrects,” was held in a renovated swimming pool in the 16th and was devoted to politically incorrect fare like horse meat and butter, with a certain masked chef making an appearance.

They even took the show on the road to New York last summer, bringing along a cast of Parisian chefs like Iñaki Aizikiparte of Le Chateaubriand and Stephane Jégo of Chez L’Ami Jean to mingle with their American counterparts like David Chang of Momofuku and Wylie Dufresne of W.D. 40 in an event held at P.S.1. in Long Island City.

Cammas admits the city had never seen anything like it. They sold 1,800 tickets in four days.

Cammas was no stranger to the New York food scene, having spent five months in Fort Greene, Brooklyn last year with his family. While New York’s best restaurants certainly rival their equivalents in Paris (Paul Liebrandt’s Corton in Tribeca is one that comes to his mind), Cammas finds that “food is less cerebral” and sophisticated in New York, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Among his favorite restaurants, he names humbler places with an emphasis on simple, fresh food like Roman’s in Fort Greene.

“The pleasure you can have in a restaurant in New York is immediate,” says Cammas. The U.S. clearly lacks the culinary tradition of France, whose’ sacred ritual of dining dates back to the days of Brillat-Savarin and Escoffier. While the growing ranks of the food-obsessed in cities like New York, San Francisco, and Chicago are labeled “foodies” or denigrated as “food snobs,” it seems that a passion for food is nothing short of a prerequisite for citizenship in France.

Cammas is currently organizing another event next summer at P.S.1. which will pit New York and San Francisco chefs against each other in a battle royale. Despite their success abroad, Cammas doubts Le Fooding will stray too far from France, although he does foresee publishing an international dining guide including cities like New York, Tokyo, Sydney, and London in the next couple of years.

Surpisingly, it’s not all about the food. All of their events are done with the “Fooding touch,” incorporating art, graphic design, music, and other creative disciplines into the fun because Cammas insists that “nothing is more boring that someone who only talks about food.”

There are plans for a festival in Milan, a “foodstock” in the Alps, as well as a costume-themed party in the former Hermès residence at a hotel particulier in Montmartre this Spring. Cammas relies on heavy-hitting sponsors like Veuve Clicquot and San Pellegrino to keep things running smoothly.

While many restaurants have struggled during the economy, Cammas remains optimistic and feels the recession has had a few unlikely benefits.

“A good consequence of the crisis is that people want to have real pleasure,” he says. People aren’t willing to spend their money anywhere. Restaurants scaling back for the economy, however, are “doing it for the wrong reasons….they’re going to hit the wall.” Instead Cammas prefers restaurants where chefs prepare food like they’re “cooking for their friends.”

For dinner in Paris, Cammas prefers Caffé dei Cioppi, a neighborhood place hidden off the Rue Faubourg Saint-Antoine in the 11th for a good risotto.

Where’s he eating tonight? He’s taking the night off and eating at home with his kids.

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by Trafton Kenney
Photo by Mateja Smigoc
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