Guardian columnist and Cré Olé restaurant guide editor, BC Pires, chats with Table Talk Awards Chef of the Year, Pierre Le Bihan, proprietor chef of Zazou Bistro Moderne, about the importance of plating, the impossibility of sacrificing quality, and the Clash.
How’d you end up in Trinidad?
I left France 25 years ago, a fully trained chef, and moved to the UK, to stay a couple of years to improve my English. Ten years later, I was still there. English food was bad but that changed drastically in the mid-90s by great English chefs like Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay.
I think that’s what kept me so long in England, not the weather. A headhunter in London called me in Bangkok. Cara Suites Hotel in Claxton Bay were looking for an executive chef. My wife, Zanifar, was the banqueting co-ordinator. Trini women dangerous! It’s going to be ten years we’re married in December.
How did you discover food?
My parents were always in the kitchen, cooking. I was always with them, putting my fingers in everything. I realised I had a talent for it. I went to catering college when I was 17. I was lucky to work with many great chefs in France. Especially in the first few years as a young chef, you need mentoring. You won’t do it by yourself. People think cooking is easy: I just have to put on the cooking channel. Food channels you take with a pinch of salt! Food channels make chef’s work glamorous. There is no glamour in the kitchen. It’s a full-of-testosterone, hot place.
What kind of music do you listen to?
I’m an old school rock-and-roller! I was born just after punk and that was my youth, man. First time I heard the Clash, I was hooked for life.
Do you listen to music in the kitchen?
Ah, no! Before or after, yes, but during kitchen time I need to think of what I’m doing. The melody of the music distracts me very fast.
How do you approach your kitchen?
First, it’s very important to greet your staff. I’m fortunate to have good [people] and I’m very careful of them. Unfortunately, a kitchen is not a democracy—but I try to get a good status quo. I tell them they should do the best job they can for themselves, not to please me. Never forget the customer. I’m not a cheap restaurant. When you dress a plate, picture yourself as a customer: Somebody going to put that in front of you and you’re going to pay X amount of money for it...what you going to say? “Oh, wow!” Or, “No, that’s a piss-take!”
What’s the approach to the menu?
It’s a bit like giving birth. You tend always to turn around the same cut [and] type of meat and vegetables, because only that’s available. So it is a good challenge. You have to really think hard. I’ve been very influenced by proper Japanese cooking, though not at all by sushi. It has influenced my touch all the time.
How did you find Trinidad when you returned in 2012?
You have a much more obvious middle class, especially that late 20s, early 30s, mid-40s guy with money. They like to be seen. They’re driving those big Audis and BMWs and they’ve travelled and been exposed and want more than doubles and roti. If, ten years ago, you had told people in Trinidad, “Guys, I’m going to do some raw fish for you”, it would have been, “Nah, we doesn’t eat that, boy!” Now, everywhere you turn is a sushi bar. The new generations of Trinis coming out is changing the Trinidad scene completely. I think it’s a good thing.
You started small?
Very small, in a guest house. I was doing 15 covers [place settings]. I knew there was a gap, since [French bistro in Woodbrook] A la Bastille closed. There was not really a pure French restaurant in Trinidad. Joseph Fernandes [at the Country Club] liked the idea of having a restaurant there but he was very careful about to whom he would give it. I’m very grateful he chose me! It’s a beautiful space and the perfect location. In October, it’ll be two years Zazou is at Country Club.
And it’s going well?
I always said I’m a bad businessman: I won’t budge from quality; I’d rather stop than start bastardising my cuisine because we need to make money. I can’t put garbage on the plate, man! And people responded well. It paid this year, with our winning three Table Talk awards. There’s a lot of competition in Trinidad. You have a few people doing proper cuisine. Khalid [Mohammed, of Chaud restaurant] does it very seriously.
Wining chef of the year had to please you?
It was the big one!
But the food styling award was good, too?
Of course: you eat with the eyes first. You give me a pile of food on my plate and try to convince me it tastes good but, if it doesn’t look good, I’m already disappointed.
Are you ready for the new customers the awards may bring you?
Sometimes people are going to come to your place and their expectations might be: they’re going to be blown away by a kind of a surreal cuisine! Keep your expectations right! I think I’ve been recognised for what I’m doing, not for what I haven’t done yet. So I’m going to keep the frame of my cuisine the same: French; Asian a little bit. Hopefully people are going to like it.
You could fit in more tables?
I don’t want them: quality, not quantity. I prefer staying where I am and doing what I do well, instead of being too greedy and suddenly changing the nature of what we are. People will feel it on the food, you know.
Zazou is in the Country Club but [Express columnist] Raffique Shah didn’t even want the UNC to hold a political meeting there.
You can’t escape that, in the Trinidadian consciousness, the Country Club has always been the representation of the colonial time. I fully understand the trauma. My hometown in France, Nantes, was renowned for the Triangular Trade. As traumatic as it was, you can’t live in the past. It’s like saying: I’m not going to go to England because they had the colonies.
So, if Raffique turned up, you’d do him a nice dish?
I’d try!