The main course, lasagne (€17.50) came next. Almost too beautiful to be touched, let alone chewed to pieces. Its flavour was dominated by dried tomatoes, Kalamata olives and the thyme that composed its base. The quiche (€8.50) was another work of art, visually more cylinder than pie, with two elegant chives poking out of it, wrapped in transparent carrot, filled with fennel, mushrooms and pine nut cream. This became evident with our first course, the Ravioli Blanc (€8.50, photo), razor-thin parsnip-pockets with a cashew ricotta filling served with fennel and apple salad, sprouts and pear arranged with artful precision in a lobster-shaped composition (or is it a mayfly?), an explosion of colour and texture, the crunch of raw veggies followed by the smoothness of cashew ricotta, the result of Jean’s ongoing effort to engineer the perfect vegan cheese. His ambition is to reinvent cuisine the way a mad scientist would reshape humanity with a set of new, difficult rules (no cooking, no animal products, delicate raw materials). But his life mission is to professionalise meatless gourmet dining and spread it across the world from his Berlin kitchen where, over the past few years, he’s already trained a small battalion of chefs in the precise art of raw cuisine (he’s now planning Living Food Academy directly upstairs).įor one, fake meat substances are banished from the menu, which is a relief. He’s also the type of Frenchman for whom wine is a more critical fluid than water. The full-blooded bon vivant confesses omnivorous tendencies (an occasional steak frites) if social occasion calls for it. He might be a missionary, but he’s no fundamentalist. Jean went vegan when living on Samui Island, a small paradise in the gulf of Thailand, and has been passionate about the health benefits of plant-based grub ever since. If the food on their plates didn’t look so gorgeous, you’d be seriously scared off by the raw/gluten-free labels next to 80 percent of the items on offer. At a neighbouring table, two Americans in suits discuss raw-vegan cooking techniques and smoothie processors. Most eaters seem to fit into the Kempinski Plaza setting: travelling businessmen, Gap-outfitted families. There’s no trace of funky hippie odours, but no glam either – just a whiff of parents and kids slurping up fresh coconut juice through straws. The interior of this temple of gourmet veganism is deceptively mainstream, in a hotel lobby kind of way. But many jetlagged celebs cherish his cuisine, almost one-of-a-kind on the European continent. One famous German leader snubbed his signature Green Smoothie (spinach, bananas, apples and kiwi) – she doesn’t like bananas. The well-connected citizen of the world (he used to run a huge establishment on London’s Leicester Square) tells me his pal Gerard Depardieu sent him photos of some blood-dripping meat when he heard Jean was embarking on a vegan adventure.
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