A conversation with
Alexandre Marchon
For the 5th encounter of the By Charlot Magazine, we pushed open the doors of the restaurant Marchon. Opened last September by chef Alexandre Marchon, and almost immediately closed again because of the pandemic, it's a promising place with bold design and décor.
Hello Alexandre, could you tell us about yourself and your background...
I have a slightly unusual path as a chef, because I retrained eight years ago. I was a project manager at an advertising agency and I dropped everything to become a chef. The call of the kitchen proved stronger than me. I had plenty of options open to me: take my CAP, do internships in restaurants. But I decided to dive straight in, just to see if I was cut out for it. In the early years, I first launched a private chef service, which worked rather well. That's how I trained myself. I bought loads of cookery books and taught myself everything, I'm completely self-taught. I knew my time as a private chef was only a stepping stone towards more academic cooking in the restaurant world, so I started by taking a head chef position in a restaurant, then other, increasingly ambitious projects came along, like Pansoul three years ago, which was my first pop-up restaurant. The following year, I took part in the opening of Polichinelle with Christophe Michalak. And then last year I opened my very own place, called Marchon.
Let's rewind a little, who passed on this love of good food to you? Do you have any childhood memories tied to good grub?
It wasn’t any one person in particular. What made me want to cook was the memory of family meals. When I saw, for instance, my aunt bringing a leg of lamb to the big table on a Sunday at lunchtime, and everyone’s eyes would light up, somewhere in the back of my mind I thought, “well, I can make people happy by doing this.” So beyond the cooking itself, it’s the moments of sharing, the moments around the table that are so dear to me. And let’s be honest, it was mostly my sweet tooth that gave me the taste for cooking.
« Beyond the kitchen itself, it's those shared moments, those moments around the table, that mean the world to me. »
You thought of yourself as self-taught, so how did you gain your experience? By working with chefs?
No, I’ve never really worked for other chefs, I never went through the traditional stages. I truly learnt to cook on my own. I didn’t go to culinary school, I learnt by doing. I picked up flavour pairings by getting stuck in, and I learnt technique from books.
For this restaurant, which is magnificent, did you surround yourself with a team of architects and interior decorators?
Yes, I called on Akira Studio, the architecture practice run by a very good friend of mine, Roman. He’s wonderfully talented, I love what he does, so I really wanted to work with him. We worked hand in hand to design the space, both the layout of the restaurant and the interior architecture. My brief was to create a restaurant unlike any other, something timeless. I didn’t want it to feel “of the moment”, like the jungle-style interiors you see everywhere at present. I wanted the place to have character, somewhere you’d recognise at first glance. The idea, above all, was to bring in texture as well as colour, which I found far warmer. So we worked with materials like terrazzo and zellige, and with some brilliant French craftsmen, including Romain Lefort, who created the terracotta wall cladding that’s become the restaurant’s signature.
What's lovely too is the light pouring in, the wood, it's incredibly warm, you feel right at home there. Did you struggle to find the place?
Thank you! Not at all. The moment I saw it, it just clicked, I knew it was the place. I was looking around the Belleville area, I wanted a corner restaurant, really bright, with plenty of space, a terrace and a ground-floor kitchen. Before, it looked nothing like this, and I really wanted to find a place I could make my own, somewhere I could do some work on…
You've always had an eye for interior design, it matters to you?
Yes, decoration and interior architecture are subjects very close to my heart. I also have a flat that was something of a blank canvas, and for which, again, I worked with Roman to rethink the space, in a completely different spirit.
You opened MARCHON last September, right in the thick of the pandemic. Yet you managed to bounce back in adversity by staying creative, with your Sunday roast chicken or the takeaway sales you set up. How do you keep steering the ship?
It's true that we only managed to open the restaurant's doors as we'd originally envisioned it for a month and a half. Then came the 9pm curfew, lockdown, the 6pm curfew, and lockdown again... So every time, we had to adapt. I haven't had the good fortune of being here for years with an already established clientele, so it's important for me to stay open and keep building connections with people in the neighbourhood, the locals. And for my team and for me, it was important to keep working. So we first reinvented ourselves as a grocer's, we kept up Click & Collect, the Sunday roast chicken, and for 2021 I've simplified things a little with takeaway menus of 2 starters and 2 mains.
You chose By Charlot plants for the restaurant: La Talentueuse, Le Voyageur, as well as a candle. Was it the pots that won you over, or the plants themselves? Is it important to you to have plants in a restaurant?
Yes, for me it's essential to have them. You can actually see them, they're soaking up the light all over the place. Choosing the plants in a restaurant matters to me just as much as choosing the materials. I've always had them, here or at home. I find they give a place real character. As for the By Charlot plants I chose, it's not so much about their name, what I really love is being able to choose the pot and the plant separately, and finding the right combination between the two. I felt the plants suited the spirit of the restaurant perfectly, and I picked pots with a beautiful texture, like the one for La Talentueuse, which reminds me of the terrazzo we chose for the bar.
« The choice of plants in a restaurant is, to my mind, just as essential as the choice of materials (...) La Talentueuse reminds me of the terrazzo we chose for the bar. »
If we asked you to whip us up a dish with the ingredients of your mood today, what would you serve us?
Who says spring, says asparagus! The first ones have just arrived, so I'll be cooking you green asparagus with wild garlic... and an egg poached in rice vinegar! The asparagus will be sautéed in olive oil, deglazed with sake, with an egg yolk, a touch of parmesan, and a little wild garlic condiment.
Who are your growers, and where do you source your vegetables from?
I only choose organic fruit and vegetables, or those from sustainable farming, always French. I'm not one for the ultra-local approach, I think focusing on French produce is already a wonderful thing. We have such variety in France that it's incredibly rich, there's plenty of choice. In Paris, if I only wanted to cook ultra-local, I couldn't work with seafood, for instance... I have several suppliers who deliver to me, depending on the produce I'm after. I work a lot with seasonal vegetables, with a little meat or fish to balance the plate.
Could you give us three little or big joys from your everyday life?
The greatest happiness in my daily life outside of covid is time spent around the table. That's what I cherish most. Whether it's moments I share as a guest, or those my clients experience at my place. Here we have a big round table, called La Maf as a nod to a friend, and when I see it full of really good friends, whether I'm in the kitchen or sitting with them, that's the greatest happiness life can offer me. I'll keep things fairly professional here, because when you work in the restaurant trade that's all you ever talk about, but I also love the half hour just before service. Once the mise en place is done, just before the guests arrive, when I have lunch or dinner with my team. We chat, we take a break that's often too short, but it's a really lovely moment. Lastly, I'd add all the time spent with family, especially with my two nieces. My brother has twin girls of two and a half, whom I adore, and with whom I love spending time.
