This article has been published in Turkish on Gastereamag on 22.11.2018
I believe there are two types of people. The first are the people who are discouraged and choose to live a quitter life when face with difficulties in life, and the second are the courageous ones, who choose to learn from these difficulties and take a risk to start over again. Unfortunately I must admit that I’m might belong to the first group because my dreams have somehow always been taken from me by events beyond my control. However I’m also very very lucky that my family, especially my wife and my friends have always been there for me and at the end I always had another chance to become part of something new and better. Lately, chance is on my side once again and I’ve become a part of Gastereamag. I’ve even published my second article. I would like to thank dear Arzu for that, because she is one of those courageous people who had the crazy idea of convincing me to write something.
Since we have started off by talking about courageous people, I would love to introduce you to Julia Sedefdjian, whose restaurant I visited in June 2018. She is a very young lady, born on the last month of 1994. She has the courage, diligence and determination that only a few people have in the world. At 14, she has stood up to her parents when she decided to become a chef and enrolled herself at the Lycee Hôtelier of Paul Augier. While studying, she also started apprenticing at David Faure’s restaurant Aphrodite in Nice. (The restaurant has closed since then.) Working in a serious job has helped her mature and grow. From an early age she has learned the importance of taking responsibility, the amount of hard work necessary to succeed and how making sacrifices becomes a natural part of your life. At 17 she moved to Paris where she didn’t know anyone and found an apprenticeship in “Les Fables de la Fontaine” through the employment agency. Here she continued to work with seafood just like in Nice. Julia says she loves to cook dishes that combine fish and vegetables and this is evident in her menu as well. When I visited her restaurant, there was only one starter and one main dish that did not have seafood in it.
Julia is very attached to her roots and her restaurant that she opened in January 2018, is called “Baieta” which means little kiss in Nice dialect. It is this “little kiss” that greets you when you enter the restaurant. It is a beautiful black and white painting by Frédéric Agid. In the painting the two partners - Sébastien Jean-Joseph in the kitchen, and Grégory Anelka in the dining room – are caricatured while kissing Julia. The amuse bouche is a pissaladière, a type of tarte/quiche typical to Nice. The anchovy, black olive and caramelized onion pissaladière is really delicious. The chef says that her favourite ingredients with fish are lemon, garlic, fresh thyme espelette peppers from Basque Country. As a starter I choose octopus that is served with espelette. The velvet crab is served in a white bowl with a juicy and sweet gnocchi. The sweet potato chips served at the top of the plate were wonderful. I have nothing to say against the gnocchi, nor the crab broth and the taste of the octopus. However, if you are used to eating octopus in the Greek Islands, at our late Lokanta Maya or Aman da Bravo, you would not be happy with the texture of this octopus. It was not one of those soft octopuses you would be used to that you could eat in two bites, almost without chewing.
Talking about “softness”, I have to mention how smooth and organized everything ran in the dining room. The well-informed and warm service, the distribution of the tables and the timing of the food were perfect. This is due to the previous experience of Julia and her team at a Michelin starred restaurant. Mentioning Michelin, I just realized that I forgot to mention a very important fact. Uuppss !! Julia Sedefdjian is the youngest chef to earn a Michelin star in France. Yes, what you just read is true. At the age of just 20, she became head chef at Les Fables de la Fontaine, and next year was awarded by the red book. Naturally, this brings her to the spotlight. At the beginning she felt weird when she started working as head chef and realized that she wouldn’t have anyone to teach or guide her. However she is very open minded, curious, reads a lot and has a very small ego and therefore she is open to keep learning from everyone. She says that having her own restaurant has made her feel more independent, which has improved her creativity a lot. One of her mentors is Christian Constant, from a neighbouring restaurant on the same street. Her role model as a female chef is Anne-Sophie Pic who was the fourth female chef to earn 3 Michelin stars and was awarded best female chef in 2011. Not a bad role model at all.
Lately, as has been the popular move among other young chefs in Paris, it was a very courageous decision, to leave her Michelin starred position to open her own restaurant. The reason behind this move is to serve more reasonably priced by high quality dishes. The chef’s signature dish, ”the Bouillabaieta”, is an upgraded “bouillabaisse”, the renown Marseillais fishermen’s stew. I found myself wiping the plate with my bread no make sure there was nothing left. Of course they make their own bread as well and serve it with a flavoured butter that they change seasonally. I was very glad when the Bouillabaieta came that I hadn’t already finished my bread. I believe I will be curiously following the development of Julia’s dishes and her restaurant for the next couple of years.
Note: I’m sorry but I will refrain again from mentioning the wonderful wine I had with my dinner because my neighbouring writer Levon will keep pestering me until I bring him some.