William Ledeuil

Ze Kitchen Galerie

4, rue des Grands Augustins
Parigi
Francia
contact@zkg.fr

Ze Kitchen Galerie is a special place. Let’s start from the location: it’s two steps away from the imaginary Balzach poet Frenhofer, later transformed into a real Picasso laboratory. Jazz drummer Daniel Humair then completed the painting with extravagant and colored furnishings, enriched with periodical contemporary art exhibitions. William Ledeuil walks within this context like fishes in water, likely in that Thailand’s Andaman sea that bewitched him with his colors.

Of course exoticism is not a brand new discovery for young French chefs but here it gets a very ill-mannered stress: spots and sketches with the taste of an avant-garde painting. Maybe we can call it fusion, but on an uncommon sense, that of Eurasia reading in her counterpart a possible future, same like it used to be with last century avant-garde movements.
His training was particular: grown up in the countryside near Sancerre and landed in Paris almost accidentally, all of a sudden William found himself attending the École supérièure de la cuisine française, under the teachings of Guy Savoy. He then followed stages by Alain Dutournier and Savoy himself, a key figure on whom he tied for ten years, equally distributed between accountancy and cooking.

But his passion was burning under the ashes until, in 2001, it burned out with the opening, after a pause spent thinking, of his lucky restaurant. Here he carried out all his full field teachings: «I used to go to little markets chasing oriental products I used to read on books». His trips were a great source of inspirations too: Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, landscapes where nature becomes a living book and spontaneously offers herself as something to be tasted.
William is not the chef who takes spices from little bags: it’s much better to have them very fresh, with full and native aromas that literally make natural flavors burst: lemongrass, ginger, galingale, aromatic herbs just minced. He was not chasing Michelin star: she found him instead. In 2008 the challenge was won and definitely turned to success.

Has participated in

Identità Milano


by

Alessandra Meldolesi

Umbra di Perugia con residenza a Bologna, è giornalista e scrittrice di cucina. Tra i numeri volumi tradotti e curati, spicca "6, autoritratto della Cucina Italiana d’Avanguardia" per Cucina & Vini