I consider myself a self-made woman. It's strange, because my family has been in the culinary industry for four generations, so I can't claim to be completely independent. Although, when I was younger, I didn't want to do the job at all. I had an older brother who was supposed to take the reins and as his little sister I was quite free. I went off to do business studies and it was only afterwards that I decided to come back home and learn cuisine from my father [Jacques Pic, at family restaurant Maison Pic in Valence, France].
It's a very emotional industry. I grew up in a restaurant. Living above the kitchen meant I could hear and smell everything. I had to learn to cook well, but the most important thing my father gave me was taste. As he trained me he was concentrating on that all the time – every time we ate he would make a remark about it, and I can still hear that. It was my first education in food, and I had to take that basis and make my own approach.
About three months after I returned home my father passed away, so it was very difficult. At the beginning I went into service, reception and every position in the house but the kitchen. In 1995, three years after my father died, we lost our third Michelin star and it was another great loss. I decided to take charge of the kitchen in 1997 and I haven't moved since. It was hard because of the atmosphere in the industry at the time; people were not ready for women in the kitchen, but I was driven by my aim to regain the restaurant's three stars and it took ten years. I was concentrating on that because it was very symbolic for me to give the house three stars again; my grandfather [Andre Pic] had earned them and was one of the first chefs in France to gain them. After World War 2, the restaurant had only one star and my father worked to regain the second and third. My family are good at struggling hard for something, and I am the same.
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My latest venture is my new opening at the Four Seasons in London's Trinity Square. The idea is to have a casual and very gastronomic restaurant – in a beautiful building – with a French touch, but ensuring everything is really well implemented using the best British produce. I didn't want to have a restaurant here and bring all the ingredients from France. It's not the way I'm used to working and even in Lausanne, where I have one restaurant, I'm very curious to discover the local cuisine.
I didn't know a huge amount about British cheese, except of course Stilton and Cheddar, but we are now connected with Neal's Yard Dairy in Borough Market, which is not far from us – it was exciting to meet other passionate people. We use beef from Scotland and work with supplier Flying Fish for our seafood. Even in France we use Scottish langoustine, because it is supplied fresh and live and in Brittany we are not able to do that.
Most of my cuisine is concentrated on combining flavours in interesting ways; I want to leave guests surprised because I am using unusual ingredients. I like discovering products most people haven't seen before – such as the leaf of the cinnamon tree, different coffees or pine burr that I found in Switzerland. I like to see how I can make French cuisine go further. When I started, you would hear everywhere that it was old-fashioned, heavy and not very modern, and that concerned me. I decided that we needed to open our minds to other cuisines and find another way. We cannot move forward without other people, because there are talented people everywhere. I get energy and ideas by meeting new suppliers.
Berlingots is one of my most well-known dishes. In each restaurant, including La Dame de Pic in Paris and in Lausanne, we have a different style of this pasta dish of pyramid-shaped ravioli flavoured with green tea and served with a local cheese and greens. For a long time I have concentrated on vegetables because I think they are very challenging – if you don't have caviar or truffles in a dish you have to struggle more to make it flavoursome. Now, I'm very focused on bouillon, and because the taste is coming from the water I make a lot of infusions with fresh or dried aromatic plants. What I'm most concerned about is how to get a deep flavour in the most natural way. One of the ways I do this is through sauces; in France, a saucier was once an important role in the kitchen, and I am getting people to work in this position again as it's very important to me.
The London gastronomic scene is incredibly rich. I think British people are very open-minded, and as soon as I discovered that I felt more relieved about my own cuisine because I push flavours very strongly. What is interesting is having a range of people with their own approach; I have my own style and I really hope people like it – it's my job, along with my team, to convince them. I've never tried to cook as a British chef because I don't have the culture, but I want to capture the spirit of the country's ingredients in a new and interesting way.
ANNE-SOPHIE PIC is the only woman to hold three Michelin stars in France in the past 50 years. She has restaurants in Valence, Lausanne, Paris and now London; anne-sophie-pic.com
La Dame de Pic London, Four Seasons Hotel London at Ten Trinity Square, London, EC3N 4AJ; ladamedepiclondon.co.uk
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