It is in adversity that we discover ourselves, we say. For those who have seen their work environment shaken, this year will have been a source of further reflection. To close the loop on a happy note, here are three people from the culinary world who took 2021 as a stepping stone to a new adventure. First portrait of three.
Originally from Quebec, chef Hugo Coudurier has traveled the world, its starred restaurants and its most prestigious hotels. At 40, and 17 years after leaving the capital, he returned to the fold to run the kitchens of Champlain. A total change for the one who had set up his homes in Asia for several years.
The idea of one day working at Château Frontenac has always haunted him, if not first in his subconscious, confides Hugo Coudurier, who grew up in Sillery when Jean Soulard was the star. When the pandemic broke, Hugo Coudurier had just started his post as chef at the Six Sens seaside resort, in Oman, in the Middle East. The hotel was closed, he was confined there for six months to cook for the sixty employees who remained at the fort. “It was really annoying, there was nothing to do. Even if the landscape is magnificent! “
It was then that he decided to sketch out bakery projects in Bali while imagining the sketches for a French restaurant in Jakarta. He was still dreaming about it very recently, until a childhood friend boosted him, barely three months ago, on the vacant position at Château Frontenac. “I saw that a lot of people from the Château were looking at my profile on LinkedIn,” he says with a smile. And I wanted to come back to Quebec. “
When he left for France to join his family who had moved there – his father being French – Hugo Coudurier did not know that he would be leaving his hometown for so long. “I had to come back for college, but I told my dad I wanted to go to cooking school. At that time, chefs were more prominent in France than in Quebec. It was seen as a beautiful profession of passion. “
This gourmet therefore decides to make his dream come true and to study at the CFA La Noue Culinary Academy in Dijon, before being hired at Guy Savoy’s restaurant, three stars at the Michelin Guide. Barely four months after his debut, Chef Savoy lets him know that he wants to send him to take over the kitchens of his establishment at Ceasars Palace in Las Vegas. “A moment of great pride” for this young shoot, who thus passed in front of more experienced colleagues from the brigade. This was the first contract in a series that took him, in nearly 20 years of career, across Asia and the Middle East.
Time to put down your bags
“I love Bali, I love Indonesia. But I don’t regret leaving, I made the decision to stop traveling, ”he explains. Especially since his parents, to whom he is very close, could less and less tolerate 24-hour flights to visit him. “Then every two or three years change jobs… I’m over the age. I want to put my bags down and do something for the long haul. Quebec is a great opportunity for that. And it’s only six hours by plane for my parents! “
His first menu served at the beginning of December has garnered much praise, especially for the finesse of execution, the influences and the range of techniques drawn from France and Asia. “I really like vegetable dishes, and I know vegan cuisine well, but I like meat. I am a carnivore ”, says Hugo Coudurier to explain the extent of his field of interest.
He humbly admits, his style remains to be defined according to the inspiration that his new lair and the producers of here will give him. Because if there is one thing he recognizes, it is that he arrives here with new eyes on the products he wants to showcase. “Every night after my shift, I discovered a Quebec cheese, he said. Cheese is my guilty pleasure! And it’s really good, what I taste. “
He intends to go as soon as possible to meet the producers, create links, and hopes to have a chat with his predecessor, Stéphane Modat. For now, he is roaming the city, Old Quebec – his new neighborhood – and reconnecting with his old comrades and his maternal aunts. “I have lots of childhood friends that I never saw anymore. And that’s something I always had in mind… As if I was renouncing my country. I am from Quebec. Quebec is my country, Quebec is my city. I am happy to come back to work there. Quebeckers are really nice. There aren’t many of them abroad and I missed them. I feel more in my element than with the French, for whom I am always the “p’tit Québécois de la gang ”” !