A chef, Yorick Tièche, and a market gardener, Bastien Bosio, in the service of taste

Just a few kilometers from chef Yoric Tièche's kitchen is his vegetable garden. High up, planted on narrow terraces, it overlooks the Rade de Villefranche-sur-Mer. In the distance, yachts and an ocean liner, in the foreground the last vegetables of late summer.

Bastien Bosio has been in charge of this larger-than-life vegetable garden almost since its creation. A change of life for this former yacht mechanic. Totally committed to his work as a market gardener, he and his assistant Raphaël take great care of the crops destined mainly for the restaurant Le Cap, the gourmet restaurant of the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat (4 toques).

Do you remember your first meeting?

Yoric Tièche: Yes, very well! It was downstairs in front of the compost bin. For an hour or two, we talked about everything and anything. Just as you do with a cook to whom you give a frying pan and three eggs to make an omelette, you can't really check a market gardener's technical skills. It was more a matter of feeling.

Bastien Bosio: Right from the start, he trusted me completely. Even though I'd never done any professional market gardening, and didn't know what I was capable of, he said to me:"Go for it! The pressure was enormous, I just had to get on with it. Despite the fact that I don't depend on my harvests and that whatever happens, I have a salary at the end of the month, I didn't take it on as a dilettante.

Was it difficult to convince your employer (Four Seasons) to invest in this project?

Y.T.: Of course, it costs money, and it's a job that nobody wants to pay for, because it's considered superfluous. I'd say it depends on the size of the house and its financial health. If an owner-manager wants to go down that road, he'll find the money, he'll find the person. Instead of hiring a pastry chef, he'll choose to hire a gardener. Asking a general manager of a mid-range hotel who manages Excel spreadsheets - which isn't the case with us - is probably going to get turned down. In my case, it wasn't difficult. A luxury hotel like ours has a duty to support this type of project. It's a way of rebalancing the values associated with this kind of luxury establishment. Above all, it requires determination. And hard work. If you're not involved in your kitchen, it's not going to work well. If you're not involved in your vegetable garden, it'll just get by. Here, the land was lent to us and the owners are very happy to have us take care of it. They feel valued and in return spend some time at the hotel, spa and restaurants. They believe in the project and I thank them every day for allowing us to bring it to fruition.

DR

How does trust develop between the chef and the gardener?

B.B: In the beginning, I was so afraid of disappointing him, that when I missed something, I didn't sleep at night. Recently, we had wild boar and badgers which, despite the electric fence, came onto the land and wreaked havoc. It made me sick, literally. Two days out of action! That's hundreds of hours of work, months of waiting and preparation all wiped out in one fell swoop. I understand the discouragement of those who put in 70 or 80 hours a week to sell their vegetables. You have to learn and remain humble, because you can't control the climate and nature. Some things do really well one year and not the next. So it's up to the chef to adapt. I'm very admiring of his work because he manages to make his cooking coincide with what I'm able to produce. He's used to coming here, he sees, he observes and tells me: I'll take it! I'll see what I can do with it.

And that's great, because I know that all my vegetables, even if they're not beautiful, he values them. And even in the worst-case scenario, if he can't work with them, I get to compost them. It's not lost.

How do you choose which varieties to grow?

Y.T.: First of all, I prefer to grow the classic vegetables well, so that they're really good and produced in the right quantities, because we still need volume, rather than going crazy and working like crazy for a small basket of one product. For example, we tried chickpeas. At first, you think: great, I've got my chickpeas! But in fact, that's the wrong idea. In the vegetable garden, they struggled. In the kitchen, they struggled, because you have to peel them. And when you put them on a plate, only 1% of customers understand. On the other hand, when you make a good burrata tomato, you've got them all wrapped up! It's the same thought process as in the kitchen. Do I buy my smoked salmon or do I make it myself? Will it taste better? More consistent? Cheaper? Maybe not.

B.B: But it's still a lot of fun! Right now, for example, I'm growing bissap, a variety of hibiscus. The leaves taste like oxalis or sorrel, and the fruit is very crunchy and fresh. Also, if I hadn't gone into passion fruit, we'd never have had any production. And that was really a great discovery.

Don't you also have to involve the whole brigade in this process?

Y.T.: Sometimes I hear people say things like:"We're not performing well because we're missing this or that. Okay, there are times when you feel you need to reinvest because, humanly speaking, you've already given it your all. But to the person who gives me the excuse of not doing because he's missing something, I retort: have you gone as far as you can with what you've got? When we were still in the covid period, a lot of people came to the vegetable garden with their picnics, moved three stones... they were happy and felt they were taking part in the project. But in the end, everyone went back to their gyms, their activities and their tablets. You can't force them if they don't really want to. In the beginning, I did it, but now I'd rather go up on my own than have to explain how to do it to a young person who doesn't see the point. Especially as when I'm here with Bastien and Raphaël, I have a really good time, it's my afternoon break. In fact, I can't go more than three days without coming.

B.B.: He helps us a lot. You have to admit that!

Y.T.: There are a lot of similarities between the garden and the kitchen. At the hotel, the kitchens never stop, even between midnight and 5am. In the kitchen garden, it's the same, with one difference, which is that when you do something in the kitchen garden, it's immediately obvious. When Bastien works for half a day, or when I come to work there myself, it shows at the end of the day. In the kitchen, you can work 14 hours a day and feel like you've done nothing. All the work of a kitchen brigade that arrives at 8 a.m. to be ready by noon, by 3:30 p.m., there's nothing left. The job's done. The fridges are empty. These are two ephemeral activities, but cooking is even more so.