The farmer’s chef

If there’s one topic that gets chef Guy Martin on a roll, it’s the superiority of French cuisine. Not that this comes as any surprise. The Bourg-Saint-Maurice, Savoy native is after all, from a brigade of toques who defend their local fare with fierce pride. But after filming two seasons of Epicerine Fine, a television series where Martin goes on an ardent hunt of French gastronomy’s building blocks, he has more to substantiate his claim.

Producing a programme that showed an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the culinary revolution was an idea the 55-year-old personally pitched to the folks at TV5 MONDE. And when a chef of Martin’s calibre asks for something, it doesn’t take long to set the wheels in motion—the project was soon produced in partnership with the French Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Each episode is a 26-minute playback of a real field trip, where Martin rolls up his sleeves and goes elbow-deep into the history, production and preparation processes behind his country’s indigenous ingredients.

Excerpt from the December issue of epicure.