L'Idiot du Village

L'Idiot du Village (the village idiot) is a place to meet that is anything but stupid. Here there two complementary personalities. On the right, Olivier Le Bret, an outgoing character who lights up the room with panache. On the left, Alain Gascoin, a gentle introvert who expresses himself in the cooking. This mutual understanding could be achieved only in an unusual and polished environment—it's a sort of vintage boudoir where the heat of the bare brick damns once and for the cold design of those addresses intent on putting on a show. This space between shadow and light is the perfect setting for complex, spiced harmonies from a cursed chef—in the sense that in Verlaine, Rimbaud's artists were "cursed", that is to say truly understood only by the happy enlightened few.
Alain Gascoin does not have a cordial relationship with his food. For him, it's all about emotion, tension, "a temple where living pillars sometimes let out confused words..." Baudelaire. So, he officiates in a sacred manner, watching carefully over the strip of crispy bacon, the crackle of a roast chicken, the crispiness of some vegetable or other. All this of course refers to a master of contemporary cuisine: Alain Passard. Impossible not to think about him when you sit at the table in the l'Idiot.