So French, so good

A festival coordinated by the French Embassy and the Tourism Ministry saw the arrival of 11 top chefs from France to offer tips on the culinary arts.

By AMY SPIRO
CHEF CHRISTOPHE Dovergne shows off his skills (photo credit: Amy Spiro)
CHEF CHRISTOPHE Dovergne shows off his skills
(photo credit: Amy Spiro)
As Damien Piscioneri pipes lemon cream inside a halfsphere of white chocolate, the crowd leans in eagerly to watch. Those in the back stand on chairs and many pull out cameras and phones to document his every move.
Piscioneri is one of 11 of France’s top chefs who were in Israel last week for the So French So Good festival, which was sponsored by the French Embassy and included classes, lectures, special meals and an exhibit and film. While the festival was full of events open to the public, three of the visiting chefs – including Piscioneri – spent a day at the Tadmor Hotel and School of Culinary Arts in Herzliya, giving master classes to more than 60 professional chef instructors.
“This is, of course, to make the Israeli tourism product better,” says Mina Genem, director of vocational training for the Tourism Ministry, “because we do know that the culinary arts are an important subject in everything, and of course in tourism.”
Genem says the idea for the master classes was initiated after Tourism Minister Stas Meseznikov traveled to Paris and discussed cooperation with his French counterpart.
“One of the subjects for cooperation was professional training,” says Genem. “We decided to bring over some chefs – the best chefs that have two or three Michelin stars – to gather all our [cooking] teachers and teach culinary arts... so they can pass on what they study.
The day of classes was free for the chef instructors; the Tourism Ministry footed the NIS 25,000 bill. While more than 60 professionals were able to attend the event, there was a waiting list of even more chefs, Genem says.
“We sent an invitation to all the schools that teach culinary arts,” she says. “We wanted to have the teachers and the trainers, and then we invited the trainers from the big hotels.”
After the event, Genem says, “people talked to me and said we have to do it again and again – once a year at least. I was actually surprised to see how successful we were. It wasn’t easy but in the end it was great.”
Among the challenges the ministry faced, she says, was briefing the visiting French chefs on the laws of kashrut, since they “do not know a lot about kosher kitchens” and almost all hotels in Israel are kosher.
THE GROUP of chefs watches Piscioneri create several recipes in the morning before breaking for a lunch cooked by students at the Tadmor school and then receiving more instruction from chefs Christophe Dovergne and Christopher Hache.
At one point, as Piscioneri waits for one of his desserts to chill in the fridge, he asks the crowd (through his Hebrew interpreter) what the most popular dessert in Israel is.
“Bamba,” calls out one of the chefs in the crowd, to laughter from the room. Another answers in French that creme brulee and chocolate souffle are popular choices. Throughout the demonstrations, the chefs speak with one another in Hebrew, French and Arabic about how to adapt some of the techniques for parve desserts and what tools and equipment they will need to buy. The room is dotted with white chefs’ jackets (and one denim one), T-shirts and a couple of army uniforms.
Dovergne, who teaches the group how to make steamed sole with potatoes, botargo (cured fish roe) and baby leeks, worked as a chef in France and the UK before devoting himself to teaching culinary arts in northern France. He is also one of the founders of the 750g.com site, which seeks to make French cuisine accessible to the general public.
Amit Hadash, who has worked as a chef instructor at the City Career School in Tel Aviv for close to 13 years, says the classes are “very, very interesting.” He teaches baking and pastry arts and says that the world of confectionery is divided basically into three countries, “France, Germany and Austria, which make up the basis for pastry arts, and French pastry work is on a very high level.”
Tammy Roberg, who works at her family’s famed Roberg kosher restaurant in Moshav Livnim in the Galilee and as an instructor at the Rimonim Culinary School, came to the event after hearing about it at Rimonim.
“I go to courses often but today I learned many new things,” says Roberg. “Recipes are recipes, but methods and approaches in the kitchen are the most important things.”
During the catered lunch, Meseznikov arrives to speak to the crowd, along with ministry director-general Noaz Bar-Nir.
“We are a country of newcomers, and everyone brings their own cuisine,” Meseznikov tells the group. While he expresses sadness that he is leaving his position, he says he is proud of all he accomplished while he headed the ministry. After he finishes speaking, he is presented with a “master minister” chef jacket and apron, a play on the popular TV cooking show Master Chef.
THOUGH THE classes at Tadmor are open only to professionals, the So French So Good festival is open to the public, including classes (for a fee) with the visiting chefs on chocolate, wine, baking and molecular gastronomy. This year there was also a culinary book fair and a full day of panel discussions on food, featuring the visiting French chefs alongside popular Israeli culinary figures critic Gil Hovav, chef Ezra Kedem and Master Chef judge Michal Ansky. Among the topics discussed were “The gastronomic heritage of France and Israel,” “Are we all chefs?” and “Art and Food.”
“The time was right to have this kind of partnership between French and Israeli chefs,” Christophe Bigot, the French ambassador to Israel, tells The Jerusalem Post. “This is what it was all about, this kind of mixing of French and Israeli cuisine. We did not expect such a success but it’s true that it was.”
The embassy also hosted the Israeli premiere of the French film Les Saveurs du Palais (Tastes of the Palace), (publicized in English as Haute Cuisine and in Hebrew as The President’s Cook).
The film, directed by Christopher Vincent, is based on the real life of Danielle Delpeuch, who was plucked from the French countryside to cook for ailing French president François Mitterrand.
Delpeuch traveled to Israel last week for the festival, attended the premiere and cooked alongside Chef Golan Gurfinkel at his Dallal restaurant in Tel Aviv. The film is now playing at theaters around the country.
Other cooking duos – who each prepared a meal together for groups of diners on Tuesday night – include Thierry Marx, who cooked with Yoram Nitzan at his Mul Yam restaurant in Tel Aviv, Mourad Haddouche who partnered with chef Eyal Shani at Salon in Tel Aviv, and Franck Detrait, who prepared a meal with chef Didi Ben-Arosh at his Cavalier restaurant in Jerusalem. Guillaume Gomez, the chef to current French President François Hollande, cooked alongside Shalom Kadosh at the Leonardo Plaza Hotel in Jerusalem.
“IT WAS the famous English philosopher [Theodore Zeldin] who said that gastronomy is the art of using food to create happiness,” says Bigot. “This is maybe a little bit ambitious, but I could say that this week was a moment of happiness when I saw the success and interest on both sides – both the French and Israeli chefs.”
Some of the chefs, Bigot says, decided to extend their stays in the country to explore more of the cuisine, and one even floated the possibility of opening a restaurant in Israel.
Piscioneri tells the Post that he has traveled the world giving French culinary instruction, including to the US, Hong Kong, Japan, China, Russia, Ukraine and Egypt.
“All people are different, all culture is different, every country is different with the flavor of the cakes and their technical abilities,” he says. Though he hasn’t experienced much of the Israeli culinary world, what he has seen is “very exciting.”
“The people [in Israel] are very intelligent about the pastry,” he says. “They want to really learn, they are interested in the quality of the cake and originality.”
Piscioneri has worked in Budapest, Moscow and Los Angeles and is now the head pastry chef at La Rotonde in Paris.
“I’m very happy to be here and to show today a few desserts,” he tells the group during a lunch cooked by students at the Tadmor Culinary School. “I hope that the next time in Israel I will see these new techniques at restaurants and hotels.”
“We wanted to have, of course, very prestigious chefs with one or two Michelin stars,” Lionel Choukroun, the cultural attaché of the French Embassy, tells the Post, “but also we wanted the new generation of chefs to see different ways of seeing the French gastronomy. We brought Thierry Marx, who is very into molecular gastronomy, but we also had some more traditional chefs... we wanted to give this large spectrum of what French gastronomy is today.”
Choukroun says he stopped at many of the French- Israeli chef collaboration dinners last Tuesday night and “Ninety percent of the crowd were native Israelis, not French-Israelis.”
The events were “fully booked just a few days after we started releasing the tickets and started promoting the cooperation between the chefs,” says Choukroun.
“For us it was really a sign that, first, the Israeli crowd was really interested in discovering this, and two, it also gave us the idea that we should really do another edition next year.
“I can tell you that all the [French] chefs... were extremely enthusiastic about the idea of coming back,” says Choukroun. “They discovered the country and also the market, the produce, the energy and the friendly atmosphere that the chefs and all the people that they met in Israel gave them... They are just waiting to come back for another event.”
And while the Israelis have a lot to learn from the French, says Bigot, the French can learn much from Israeli chefs as well.
“We may also have Israeli gastronomy week in France,” says Bigot, “because it’s a kind of partnership, so we have to also get the Israeli combination of the Polish heritage and the Yemenite heritage with some Moroccan elements all together with this very special ambience that develops in your restaurants.
“We can also learn from this,” he says. “It’s not a one-way process; its a two-way process and I think the time is right for this.”
So French So Good events have been held in the United Arab Emirates, the UK and China as part of a global campaign that France launched two years ago .
One part of the festival that remains for the next week is the photo exhibition “Art & Food,” which closes on February 20. The circulating exhibition of the third International Food Photography Festival focuses on the theme of street food and comprises 80 photos around that topic. The exhibition, which is free to the public, is being displayed at the French Institute in Tel Aviv.


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