|
Fredy Girardet, the culinary giant
of our time It is a rare piece of luck to have lived in the same era as Fredy Girardet, considered by most everyone, particularly the chefs around the world, as one of the greatest chefs of our time; and to have partaken some of his greatest culinary creations. I have not always been that lucky. In one of my other passionate hobbies, jazz, I never got to see the greatest saxophonist of my time, John Coltrane, play in person. Spellbinding as he was in his records, he was immensely more so in live performances. I've always regretted that I was deprived of that experience. So when I heard in the fall of 1996 that Girardet was going to retire, I wanted my unforgettable experiences at his restaurant to be somehow memorialized. Besides the novel dishes, which he created almost spontaneously, it his sauces that were the most memorable. If you can think of the concentration in a Chateau Lafleur from a great vintage combined with the perfume and the complexity of a Romanee Conti-- a combination impossible in the context of wine making--that is how his greatest sauces were--totally out of this world. Instead of giving him a present, therefore, like a bottle of wine, or sending him a card, I wrote a letter reminiscing about my many visits at his restaurant in Crissier, Switzerland. I hand delivered it to him when I was at Chez Girardet for the last time on September 27,28 1996. The letter did not take very long for me to write because, as you will notice, the words come right from the heart.
Wine cellar at Chez Girardet He always had excellent wine selections and very knowledgeable sommeliers. Here I learned about Pierre Morey's Montrachets, Guy Roulot's Meursaults, and had fabulous old vintages of Leroy, Rousseau, and DRC among many others. He had a superb selection of Italian wines, which as a general rule, never used to appear in the lists of three star restaurants (by sheer coincidence I recently met the person responsible for his Italian selections, Francesco Battuello. He, Wolfgang and I have gotten together several times with Girardet since his retirement) One wine story at Girardet tops all others, however : Until the mid-' 80s their "house wine" for me was 1961 Hermitage La Chapelle by Jaboulet. This was before it had been proclaimed as the "wine of the century" or a "100-point" wine and so on. It was much, much cheaper then. There would be a bottle of it waiting for me almost every time I came for a meal . Then one day when I arrived for lunch, the day after I had consumed the 1961 for dinner, the sommelier came over to me. He was white as a sheet. He told me he had committed a big faux pas. He had discovered the previous night that no 1961 was left in the restaurant's cellar. Not wanting to disappoint me, he took a bottle from Girardet's small personal collection instead. He told me that when Girardet found out about it that morning, he was "none too happy" (he probably meant "livid" but could only muster the mildest version of it !). Girardet also came over and explained the situation to me. I laughed and put both of them at ease. As it so happened I had bought a case of it years before, out of which I had 10 bottles left (now it is down to 6). So I brought a bottle back the following trip and peace was restored. What replaced it? It was another Rhone. Nowhere near the quality of the 1961, but a splendidly drinking 1967 Chateauneuf du Pape Les Cedres also from Jaboulet (1967 is an excellent vintage in Chateauneuf, as it is also in Piedmont). It has that unmistakable Chateuneuf character of an "animal nose", with very opulent flavors, but still balanced. When the restaurant's cellar was auctioned off by Sotheby's two years ago a great many wines, mostly quite extraordinary, were sold off at high prices. I formed a group with few of my friends and bought everything they had of that 1967 Chateauneuf --more than 10 cases. We also got many treasures which you won't find mentioned in any books unless you've had it yourself as, fortunately, I had :Gilette 1953, 1955, Laville Haut Brion 1955, Lynch Bages 1955, Figeac 1961, Pape Clement 1962, many Rayas, de Montille, Leroy and so on. |