Profile | French chef in Hong Kong on what she learned from Joël Robuchon, what it’s like being a woman head chef, and her cooking philosophy at Odyssée
- Aurelie Altemaire, chef de cuisine at Odyssée in Hong Kong, worked in Paris, Atlanta, Los Angeles and London before moving east with her husband in 2019
- She tells Bernice Chan about going to the US speaking no English, her 10 years with Joël Robuchon and why she doesn’t think it is harder to be a woman head chef
“I was born in Strasbourg [in Alsace], France, but when I was eight days old, my family moved to Paris. My dad changed jobs when my mum was pregnant, but she wanted to give birth in Strasbourg. My family is from Alsace. My maternal grandparents were Italian. They escaped [Benito] Mussolini’s Italy before World War II and my mum was born in France. That’s why I was raised Italian, while my father is from Lorraine, [from] a town next to Strasbourg.”
What was your childhood like?
“Food was always very important to my family. Every Sunday morning, my parents would go to the market to get fresh food to make a nice lunch for the family. Depending on the season, we would have dishes like scallops, Dover sole or rabbit. I started making fresh pasta with my mum when I was young.”
When did you decide to become a chef?
“I was not good in school, and in France, when you are 15 years old, you need to decide what to do with your life. I realised cooking for me could be a career, not a pastime, so I decided to try it, which was scary for my family because none of them were cooks and everyone knew it was a very hard job.”
What was the culinary programme like?
“For five years, I went to culinary school in Paris, where I did a week studying and then two weeks of apprenticeship, and on school holidays I worked as well. I enjoyed it very much. My mum said that when I was in school, I never spoke about my day, but when I started cooking, I talked about everything.
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“I learned how to cook French cuisine, but the cooking part was not the most important because we learned about financing, how to run a restaurant – the actual cooking part wasn’t hard.
“In the programme I apprenticed at a small hotel in Paris called Hôtel Bedford. It didn’t have a Michelin star, but my chef was nice because he taught me the basics, and I cooked traditional French dishes for the staff meal so I could pass the evaluation. It was nice to work in a small hotel compared to a big Michelin-starred restaurant because I had to do everything.
“I was there for two years. As part of the apprenticeship I also did a year as a waitress in a one-Michelin-star restaurant in Paris called Clovis. Then I worked at Le Bristol with executive chef Éric Fréchon.”
How did you end up in Atlanta?
“In 2003, I was 20 years old and went to the United States. I knew if I went to London I would not learn English, so I wanted to go to America. I sent my CV by post to about 200 restaurants everywhere and I was lucky to find chef Günter Seeger, who gave me a job in his restaurant, Seeger’s, in Atlanta.”
What was it like to be in the US?
“I was crying on the plane on the way there. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, I didn’t speak any English. I don’t think I was brave – crazy maybe. It was my first time away from my family. But Atlanta was very nice. After one and a half years, I moved to Los Angeles because one of the sous chefs I’d worked with in Paris was the sous chef in L’Orangerie and he called me. It is closed now, but it was a fine-dining French restaurant open only for dinner.
“LA was nice to travel from and I visited many places: Death Valley, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, San Francisco, San Diego, Mexico and Hawaii. L’Orangerie was very busy, 140 guests at dinnertime. I came from a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Paris with six of us doing 30 covers and here I was in LA by myself doing 140. I had to be very organised. In 2006, I decided I was too far away from my family – though now I am in Hong Kong – and went to London. I worked for Joël Robuchon for 10 years, working all the way up to head chef managing 37 people.”
What was it like working for him?
“It was very good. I like Joël Robuchon’s philosophy, it’s very simple, very produce-based. What is hard is that there are a lot of dishes, 18 small plates, then a full à la carte menu, full lunch menu, and tasting menu, so there are a lot of things to prepare, and you do everything yourself, everything is made every day so it is fresh, so you really learn a lot.”
Is it harder to be a head chef as a woman?
“I don’t think so. There are ups and downs, there are some people who don’t like you because you are a woman, and some who prefer to work for you because you are a woman. I don’t stop and think about myself as a woman every day, that’s what I am, it doesn’t make me better or worse, I cannot change it. I never met anyone who didn’t respect me. You respect the work and the person rather than you respect the sex.”
What did you do afterwards?
“It took me a while to leave Joël Robuchon because I kept getting promoted. But finally I decided it was time to cook for myself and opened a restaurant called Bokan in 2017, in London’s Canary Wharf. It was modern French, more casual. Opening my own restaurant, it was nice to get to decide everything, choose my plates and place orders for everything. I was there for over two years and then we came to Hong Kong.”
How did that happen?
“My husband, Albin Gobil, got a job as chef de cuisine at Gaddi’s, in The Peninsula Hong Kong, in 2019. It wasn’t easy for me to get a job, but also I was super tired from Bokan so I took a few months’ break. It took three months to find a job here. We had visited Hong Kong two or three times before, and once my husband did a promotion at The Peninsula, so we had some friends here already and knew what we were getting into. I worked six months at Le 39V before we decided to change the restaurant to Odyssée.”
Do you have a favourite ingredient?
“No favourite! It’s like you’re a journalist, you work with letters, what is your favourite letter? You need all of them to be successful. So it’s hard to decide on one thing. If there is one thing I cannot cook without, it’s salt. Eggs are amazing, you can do anything with one egg. Everything is important, you need everything to make something.”
