The Secret Garden of Guy Savoy
From the first time you hear his warm, solemn voice with its carefully-cadenced rhythms (what I call an after-midnight radio voice!) Guy Savoy's delightful personality will win you over. He is a born storyteller whom you could easily listen to for hours. He can summon up pictures, tastes and feelings using nothing but words. Add to that leading man looks, a business executive's suit, a gentleman's elegant manners… and you get some idea of the man.

Born in a small village between Lyon and Grenoble, Guy Savoy sometimes escapes from his restaurant on the rue Troyon in Paris to reconnect to his roots and recharge at his house nestled in the hills of the Dauphiné. He is deeply attached to this region and its way of life, and its influences show through in all his cooking. You need only taste his pumpkin soup garnished with beautiful slices of white truffle in order to breathe in, as if by osmosis, some olfactory memories that have come straight out of his childhood.

Life, he says, is a construction of different life stages, all built upon the foundation of childhood. "I draw my inspiration from childhood: in fact, it is childhood that has provided me with the most revelations. At the time I didn't realize the treasures, the riches that were all around me, of having a father who would forage through the woods in search of mushrooms. He also had a garden in which I felt he spent far too much time. But now I can imagine how much pleasure he found in it - when you're a kid, playing is the only thing that matters and anything constraining seems like punishment! The fact that he would get up in the night whenever there was the slightest risk of frost to light a fire in the garden seemed ridiculous to me. I saw it all as constraint. Now I realize that thanks to his constant effort, we had fresh vegetables every day, and we were fortunate to eat outstanding products on a daily basis."

In the lower part of the Dauphiné region, the land is generous. Everything grows there. The cycle of life comes full circle and so, like his father, Guy Savoy has created a garden: a planted, hoed, weeded, dug, watered garden that provides a visual delight even before it becomes a gustatory one. "I have hazelnut trees, almost ten varieties of apple trees, six kinds of cherry trees…" he says. "I raise my vegetables, I tend my chickens - I find it primordial. I never stray far from this kind of hands-on involvement - I believe it's the root of our well-being, a feeling of living self-sufficiently. It's an exceptional feeling. For Saturday lunch there were twelve of us; we killed a duck, made a pumpkin gratin… It was a simple roast duck, but one that for its whole life had eaten only corn, wheat, dry bread, and a paste made from pasta and rice. It has a completely different flavour. These are the little things that make life good.

"I'm an hour and fifty minutes away by TGV, the high-speed train. Some Parisians spend as much time on the road everyday though they live only 40 kilometres from their workplace. From my kitchens in Paris to my garden takes exactly two and a half hours. For me, it's important to keep in mind the ties that link man to the earth. As cooks, we're fortunate to be the last link in a wonderful chain that extends from planting to the pleasure of eating.

But what are the first links in the chain?
They are the fishermen, producers, farmers, vine growers… all these people who work and who are passionate about what they do. People don't realize that all these exceptional products take time. To grow a carrot, you have to wait several weeks. A fine Bresse chicken that is brought in right now can be prepared and cooked in a hour, but it took almost a year to bring it to the point of being ready to eat. As cooks, we need to have deep respect for the product. Cooking is the art of joyfully transforming products. We are in a theatre, limited in place, time and action. We have a clear view from the moment the product arrives in the kitchen, until its transfer to the dining room to be savoured. That is what is so wonderful! I think today that of the many reasons I chose this career, the greatest is its immediacy: the art of elevating things that are simply edible to the level of pleasure within a few minutes, to eat them and take in their sensory impressions in one place and in a given time. If you are an architect, it can take years between the first pencil stroke and the fulfillment and actualization of your creativity. No other art except the culinary art sends such an immediate echo back to its creator.

"It's true, of course, that there is also an ephemeral side, but I am more and more moved by this immediacy. That is what makes this profession so real, so human. It is totally concrete. The man who raised the chickens doesn't see any of this! He doesn't experience the crescendo that builds in the dining room, the laughter, the happiness that is evident from one table to the next. We are real pieces of a civilized, hyper-civilized, planet. It's extraordinary! I don't mean to ignore everything else, but to have built my little piece of the planet around pleasure, in the noble sense, by which I mean pleasure that is tied to effort, to the work of an entire chain, a whole team that puts everything into play in order to heighten these products that will bring joy… this, for me, makes every one of these products a little shout of joy."