Classical French with a Pacific touch
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor
La Mer chef Yves Garnier's office, like that of most chefs, is smaller than the restaurant's walk-in cooler.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser
But in addition to the usual staffing schedules, budget documents and cookbooks for the fine-dining restaurant at the Halekulani Hotel, Garnier has found room here for his memories. Here is a picture of him with Prince Rainier of Monaco. There is a menu on which artist Leroy Niemann has drawn a portrait of Garnier. And here, in one of a number of bound albums, are his most touching souvenirs: his father's hand-written recipes from the family's charcuterie in the ritzy 16th Arondissement.
Chef Yves Garnier expounds on fine food in his Halekulani kitchen.
Learn how to make Garnier's Raviole de Poulet au Epinard et à la Crème de Curry (Chicken Curry Ravioli).
Charcuterie, from cuiseur de chair, one who cooks meats, is the French art of preparing meat (and particularly pork) in the form of pâtès, rillettes and such, generally sold in a deli-style shop. In Yves Garnier's notebook, recorded in curly continental script, are the elder Garnier's techniques for making use of every part of the pig. "Everything is good — tout tout le cochon," he said. "We use everything except the toenails."
Garnier is easily Hawai'i's most classically inclined French chef, the former chef de cuisine at La Coupole restaurant in the Mirabeau Hotel in Monte Carlo, where he earned the acclaimed Michelin star, and also at Maona restaurant in the famous Monte Carlo Sporting Club. La Mer received an 'Ilima Award last year, voted by Advertiser readers as Hawai'i's best French restaurant.
La Mer has many regulars, but perhaps the most passionate is Dave Slusher, a bachelor who describes himself as "a blue-collar guy who likes great food" (he sells carpets now but is a former businessman). Two or three times a month, on a weeknight at about 8, Slusher settles himself at a table in the shadowy restaurant with its open-air views of the soft night and orders a couple of his favorite courses — the mussel soup with saffron and the rack of lamb, for example.
"It's not expensive when you put it in perspective," he insists. "It's an extraordinary experience every time. I look at it as an education: Every time I come in, I've learned something." For example, from Garnier's penchant for preparing the same item two different ways — a rare duck breast alongside a confit of duck thigh, for example —Êhe's learned that even so minor a matter as how something is cut can make a difference in the eating experience.
Slusher recalls an evening when he was served a special foie gras terrine in a sauternes aspic, garnished with gold foil and truffles. "I just don't think anyone else in the world that night had anything better," he said. "As long as Garnier's here, I'll focus my pennies here."
On a recent afternoon, we trailed the robust chef, garbed as ever in spotless whites, to see how a French approach plays out in a Hawai'i kitchen.
Garnier speaks a sort of "Frensh" — not Franglish, which would imply equal parts of each language, but a patois that is mostly French with a little heavily-accented English and a lot of smiling inquiries to see if you're following along.
His standard greeting as he buzzes through the kitchens is, "OK? Everything is OK?" Although he understand English well, his accent defeats many listeners. His chefs understand him from long experience, though only a couple of them speak French. But if he's frustrated by having to operate every working day in a language fog, Garnier doesn't show it.
The classic story that he tells on himself is that, after a few months of English tutoring when he first came here 12 years ago, "my tutor's French was very much improved." On this day, in deference to a reporter's negligible French, young chef Francois Bougard interprets, filling in whenever the reporter's brow grows wrinkled.
Garnier's day begins with a mid-afternoon "shopping trip" to the Halekulani basement, where he checks La Mer's order for the day with storeroom manager Gary Kaaiai: a tray of glistening nohu and weke fish just delivered, bags of gorgeous Nalo Farms micro-greens, vacuum-packed whole Muscovy ducks, a box of squash blossoms.
The written order goes downstairs nightly and must be signed for before the carts roll into the freight elevator. Even at the luxurious Halekulani, cost containment is a standard; not even chef Yves is allowed to pop into a storeroom and walk away with a tin of truffles or a box of sea salt.
As we peer into the cooler of live Maine-type lobster from Kona, Garnier explains that La Mer's seafood dishes — onaga in a salt crust, lobster salad, moana strudel — are the ones for which there is "tres forte demande!" He can't take some of these off the menu, though he tinkers with the sides and presentation.
Garnier calls his style "cuisine du soleil" ("cuisine of the sun") an approach that evolved from years spent in the south of France. Though he works with tropical seafood and produce now, his food is firmly rooted in the world of stocks and mother sauces and the time-honored cooking techniques of Auguste Escoffier and friends.
And this, too, goes back to his parents: He recalls his mother as a fine home cook. His father did catering out of his charcuterie shop. At 15, his father apprenticed Yves into the kitchens of the legendary Hotel Crillon in Paris. There, the young culinaires were barred from using their creativity and imagination. The chef was a minor god, not to be contradicted or even questioned.
But the great meals at home, and the drudgery in those conservative kitchens, gave him something he considers among his most valuable possessions: "I still have the taste of those sauces in my mouth."
When he came to the United States with the Ritz-Carlton organization, in San Francisco and Palm Beach, Fla., he saw many young American chefs who had no such background. Happily, he says, this has changed: He considers Hawai'i's culinary schools "tres bon." Still, he believes it's vital that young chefs travel and change positions often early in their careers. "The most important thing is to learn the tastes — if you know only the teriyaki and the shoyu, what can you do?" he asks.
On this day, Garnier is giving the final touches to a refreshed La Mer menu. It is a painstaking process, paging through cookbooks and notes, daydreaming and sketching, experimenting in the kitchen in the quiet hours before service begins and then photographing the finished dishes. Every chef and waiter gets a photo, a description and a taste of every new dish, so they can understand and describe it.
"We make an experiment," he says. He has been playing with the idea for a ravioli appetizer stuffed with seared foie gras and white summer truffles, poached in chicken broth and served on a bed of quickly steamed Manoa lettuce drizzled with a wine-butter sauce with truffle oil and a sprinkle of Parmegiano Reggiano. Sinful-sounding, but will it work?
Sous chef Darryl Shinogi has prepared a triple-strong chicken broth, trimmed the knobs of homely-looking truffles, seared and sliced the foie gras, prepped the lettuce and prepared the rich beurre blanc (soft butter suspended in a white wine reduction), so it takes only minutes for Garnier to conduct his experiment.
Place a little foie gras and truffle in the center of a won ton pi, pinch the corners together to form a little crown-like object and plop it in simmering broth. Arrange the hot lettuce on the plate, plop the hot ravioli in the middle, drizzle the sauces and it's time to taste. "OK?" he asks.
Very OK, though serious discussion follows — the foie gras and truffle should be sliced, the cheese is unnecessary.
Asked if he'll design a version of the dish that's affordable for the home cook, he looks thoughtful.
But the answer is a foregone conclusion. "OK!"
