Chef Anne-Sophie Pic on taste, pleasure and growing up above her father’s restaurant

1. What is your earliest memory?
   So many things! Most of my world was tasting, smelling each moment of the day. I remember my father [restaurateur Jacques Pic] preparing crayfish in the kitchen; we lived in an apartment above. The flavours, the preparation. It was a fabulous world for a little girl.

2. What was the first dish you learnt to cook?
   Cooking with my father — first of all, a chocolat marbré. It was amazing. And it was difficult! Then I made strawberry charlotte and other desserts, and I was very proud to present them to him.

3. Who was or still is your mentor?
   If I had to say just one, my father, for sure. Michel Bras was one of the first self-taught chefs to gain a third Michelin star, so he was a role model. The Italian chef Nadia Santini. She’s like a sister. She’s amazing. Pierre Gagnaire for his creativity. These three chefs; it was like a dream when I was younger to see what they were doing.

4. How fit are you?
   It’s very important for me to stay in shape. I like to swim in the summer. I walk in the mountains. I like to be connected to nature. When you do sports, you don’t think about work, you are concentrating on yourself.

5. Breakfast or dinner?
   Dinner is the moment I go back to my house and eat with my son and my husband. It’s a very precious time all together.

6. Which technique did you struggle to perfect?
   All techniques need to be experienced and improved, and nowadays I’m very focused on fermentation, because it gives depth to my cuisine. We started with miso and kombucha, and I want us to expand. We will have a special lab for experimentation.

7. Which flavour pleases you most?
   The plant world fascinates me. Aromatic plants are amazing. When I discovered Earl Grey tea, I wondered why I loved it so much; it was the bergamot. I’m very fond of citrus. Pine buds were a beautiful discovery I made in Switzerland.

8. Which flavour can’t you abide?
   I’m not attracted by too much sugar. I’m more attracted by bitterness than acidity, even though acidity is easier to work with. Bitterness is more elegant. I’m looking for harmony. The art of the chef is to balance everything perfectly and to work with all ingredients.

9. What equipment could you not do without?
   A knife. If you can’t cut, you can’t cook! And a spoon, because you need to taste.

10. What is your guilty food pleasure?
    Chocolate. When my mother picked me up from school, she used to bring me bread and butter with grated chocolate from Valrhona.

11. Do you see yourself as an artist?
    Cuisine is both art and essential to life. But to consider myself an artist could be a little pretentious.

12. What would you have done differently?
    I have no regrets. I was always really engaged with what I wanted to do, and I always did my best. When you’re young, you’re full of energy. I’d like to be younger with the same maturity I have now. Perhaps the only thing is that you don’t give enough time to your family. My son is now 17, and I can’t believe time has passed so fast.

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