When the bijouterie is a bonbonniere

Art Culinaire, Summer, 2005

Pierre Herme

Paris, France

In the Family Way

On a busy Friday afternoon at Payard, every seat at every table, every barstool, every inch of space has been spoken for. Two well-heeled women without reservations are preparing to give up on getting a seat for lunch, but Francois Payard isn't letting them off so easy.

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"Ladies, if you can give me five minutes, I will find you a table," says the chef from behind the restaurant's maitre d' stand. He's in his chef whites, but it's clear that Payard holds equal sway in the front and back of the house.

"When I am in the restaurant, I'm not just worrying about pastries," he says. "It is my name on the door, and I have to make everything nice. The way we speak on the phone to customers, the lighting, everything." Payard has presided over his eponymous patisserie and bistro since 1997, after seven years working as the executive pastry chef at New York's Daniel, Le Bernardin and Le Cirque restaurants. He calls his 1990 arrival in New York a "shocking" experience, saying, "It was so very different. In Paris, you might wait twenty minutes for a glass of water at a restaurant, but in New York, in America, people are much more impatient. It was difficult to adapt to everything, and I was working too slowly. My challenge was to find ways to make the food faster, but just as good." He also arrived without knowing any English, but a few months' worth of intensive language classes brought him up to speed.

Payard, who was born in Nice, represents the third generation of pastry chefs in his family. His grandfather and parents ran a pastry shop on the Riviera, Au Nid des Friandises, that the chefs says was "very, very classic, and the best in the south of France." He chose to refine his skills in Paris, and eventually held pastry chef positions at La Tour D'Argent and Lucas Carton before coming to the States in search of the freedom of expression that he says was discouraged by the French culinary establishment.

For Payard, the American kitchen environment, less formal than its French counterpart, is another reason to love being here. "In France, everyone says 'vous' in the kitchen, it is much more formal," he explains. "In America, you work much more closely with your employees, and are more friendly. For me, everyone should be treated as equal. Sometimes my employees slap my head, like I am a brother. It's more like a family here."

Although Payard made his mark in New York using inventive techniques and flavors, he holds fast to a philosophy that "it is about the making of food, not the making of a toy. Everything you see on the plate, you eat. I think some pastry chefs have gone too far to be eccentric. If the [executive] chef is classical, you cannot be making a clown in chocolate. I cannot be eccentric like I was at Daniel, because there the people go looking for an experience, and at Payard they just come for a good meal." And, thanks to Payard's executive chef Philippe Bertineau, customers get what they came for. "Without Philippe, I cannot have this restaurant," says Payard simply. "He makes the restaurant what it is. With ingredients, and getting every flavor right, he is even more picky than I am, every day, and that's the reason why I have a great business."