France stunned as chef rejects pleasures of flesh 

Alain Passard

Patrick Bishop in Paris / The Telegraph (London) 13jan01

FOR the French, it is the equivalent of a pacifist general or an atheist cardinal. Alain Passard, presiding genius at the Michelin three-star L'Arpège restaurant in Paris, has gone vegetarian.

Beef, lamb, chicken, veal, all staples of the haute cuisine repertoire, have been struck from the menu of his Left Bank establishment. The dishes will now be based on vegetables, and not necessarily fancy ones but carrots, turnips, celery, onions and leeks from a market garden in western France. His decision has stunned a nation of dedicated carnivores, albeit rather chastened ones as a result of recent food health scares.

M Passard said: "This has got nothing to do with mad cow disease. It's got nothing to do with morality. It's just that I woke up one morning and didn't take any pleasure any more in eating meat. I wanted to change the material with which I worked. It's like an artist who works in watercolours and turns his hand to oils or a sculptor in wood who changes to bronze."

Last week the menu featured celery and chestnut on a truffle fondue; turnips, black radishes, cabbage and thistle with parmesan and black truffles; mousse of avocado and pistachio oil on a raft of caviar. M Passard said: "I feel much more comfortable producing a dish using a carrot or a radish, whereas I had no emotion for a rump steak or a saddle of lamb."

Some Paris chefs have banned beef since the BSE scandal. Alain Ducasse dropped it from the menu of what was to be a new beef and lobster bar, and Guy Martin at the Grand Vefour has not served it for several years. But steak-frites remains France's most popular dish and meat is seen as an indispensable part of a healthy diet. It remains to be seen whether anyone will follow M Passard as he veers off the culinary highway.

He says: "I'm heading elsewhere, advancing. It's a resurrection in my life as a chef. The customers are delighted. They realise that one can still be gastronomically astonished." Prices will not fall from the £175-a-head average. Vegetables are labour intensive, points out M Passard.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=004230638848913&rtmo=west0sob&atmo=rrrrrrrq&pg=/et/01/1/13/wbse113.html 26jan01