Thierry Marx is a two-star chef, very inspired by molecular cuisine. He is also known and appreciated for his committed militant actions.
With Guillaume Gomez, French ambassador for French gastronomy, Thierry Marx is sponsoring the second edition of the National Days of Agriculture which will begin this Friday, June 17, 2022. They last three days. The goal this year is to learn more about the life and work of French farmers.
franceinfo: These National Days of Agriculture are a great opportunity, for the fervent defender of local producers that you are, to highlight and highlight the work of farmers.
Thierry Marx: It’s obvious. That is, it is no longer an adjustment variable. What surprised us, moreover, in the agricultural world and also in the world of food, is that food was not conducted as a political fight. And precisely, these Days of Agriculture will serve to rest the framework a little, to end up with food that is of quality for everyone.
We recently saw images of Agrotech students who, precisely, on the day of their graduation, when they had become engineers, precisely expressed their rejection of the education given to them. Did it touch you?
A lot and for several reasons because at the French Center for Culinary Innovation, based in Paris-Saclay, we are working on the food of tomorrow with a certain number of researchers.
Research: yes. Make engineers: yes. But if it is to ask them to do a productivist agriculture: no. Now, what kind of agriculture do we want? It is with the farmers that we will find solutions.
Thierry Marxat franceinfo
As a child, you found and saved yourself through cooking, watching a bakery. And every morning, you say to yourself: I want to go. Your school results were mediocre and cooking was an extremely positive element for you, so much so that today you are the godfather of those days. Is it also a fine example of hope?
I don’t pretend to be a role model, but don’t ever think you’re assigned failure or given quarters. You have to move forward. It’s true that the world of pastry, the world of cooking still brings me a lot because I haven’t compartmentalised it. I quickly understood that molecular gastronomy was not a cooking trend, it was a tool for understanding. What excites me is cooking, because there is this bond of trust with the other that comes alive and it is pure happiness to cook for others.
You have enormous rigor. You were even blue helmet. I have the impression that you needed to learn this rigor, to submit to “authority”.
Yes, I refused the school authority when I was younger. The first educational framework that was given to me was that of judo. And there, I discover, roughly, the rule of the three Ms: Mimicry, Memory, Mastery. “Observe and shut up, learn and understand, then you can innovate” and I understand doing it to learn. I understand that I’m not that bad. I needed an educational framework that brings me back to myself. What I was trying to build at the time was a verticality, almost a solitude, constructed and assumed, solitary and united. And it is learned very young and I was lucky to have a mum, dad and grandparents who taught me never to look for a scapegoat.
You have always sought sharing. It was important for you, perhaps with regard to your parents, this need to be with the family, because the kitchen is also a way to meet, to take the time, to discuss and exchange .
It’s true, but the kitchen also took me far away from the family unit. I left very early, I left the family very early.
At one point, I had the impression that it was necessary to leave the Bois-L’Abbé district in Champigny-sur-Marne!
Leaving the neighborhood was necessary, but initially pastry making, before cooking, gave me the opportunity to discover France, to discover different people, different regions, different cultures.
The kitchen, beyond nourishing me physically, nourished me intellectually.
Thierry Marxat franceinfo
Your grandfather was a true example for you, a Jewish, Polish, communist refugee during the Second World War. It forges a man.
Yes. He wanted the working world to learn and he had a phrase: “Fulfillment is a skilled worker who dreams of being a foreman“, at the time, we said foreman, not manager and “that a manager can become a craftsman, a small boss“. And he thought it was the normal social ladder. And I think he was right, that is to say that what makes free men is all the same to educate them.
Proud to sponsor these National Days of Agriculture?
I’m proud because I’m a fan of agriculture, I’m a lover of the agricultural world. I never forgot that my grandmother, who didn’t want me to do anything stupid, between June and September, said: “Anyway, since you won’t be prized at school as much as we put you in the countryside“, so I was learning. So I have a very special affection for the agricultural world, knowing that there is a real fight over food to be waged with them. And being a sponsor means to be able to say it loud and clear. There are really big stakes because the new professions are probably in the food professions.