7/24/2008: Chef Arlandis is now the Executive Chef of the Captiva Yacht Club. When we did this interview with him back in April, he was still the chef of the Sandy Butler.  

GG: Hi Philippe.

Philippe: Good morning.

GG: Can you tell us first where you grew up?

Philippe:  I was born in Algeria, when Algeria was French. So I am a little bit of a misfit Frenchman. Then I moved to France and did my formal training but only for 10 years. Most of my time after that I live in Canada, a little bit in Brazil and a little bit in Mexico and now the United States, and I travel a lot to Canada and Nova Scotia.

GG: When did you leave Algeria?

Philippe: I left Algeria around 8 years old.

GG: So those first 8 years in Algeria, what was it like?

Philippe: It was hell. We were in a civil war and I've seen people blown up. I’ve seen my own uncle on the bottom of a well. Brutalized.

GG: That must have been traumatic.

Philippe: We were traveling with machine gun, with hand gun. My mom was saying " If they catch us, blow up the car" and she left me with a grenade next to me when I was six years old and my sister was four years old and I had the responsibility to blow up the (stops speaking.pausing to collect himself)…

GG:  I can see a passion when you talk about your mother, let's move on to a more pleasant subject for you. How did your family influence you with cooking? Did you start at a young age?

Philippe: My grandmother, when in France, it was a traumatic move for us because we left with basically nothing. When we arrived in France we stayed in refugee camp and then the French government relocated us as a farm. The whole family, and the whole family was like 25-30 people, was on the farm. Because we could have food and everything else on our table, they all helped and we all lived on the farm. Everyday my grandmother and all the grandmothers and mothers prepped for 20-30 people. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was almost a restaurant. Some restaurants have less then that. So it was breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday.

GG: How about specific recipes your grandmother shared with you?

Philippe: Well, I have multiple things that my grandmother, on the side of my mother, she had a book and I have her book about everything. It is eclectic. She was born in Algeria, we were three generations of people born in Algeria, she had recipes from Morocco, Indonesia and Algeria and foods like that and then after that she had the French side of herself where she was doing pates and sausages and ham and even bruschetta, we used to have bruschetta at home. And after that she was cooking tureen of quails, because her father was shooting quails, and she learned to how to do that.

GG: What I’m hearing from you is that and correct me if I’m wrong, you grew up with what was termed peasant food, basically?

Philippe: Yes, but higher end…right yes.

GG: That has become the gourmet food that we have now.

Philippe: That was the peasant food for some period of time, we shoot quail, we have rabbit, we were raising rabbits and I learned to kill the rabbit, to skin the rabbit, to cook the rabbit, to clean the rabbit and every three months we kill and butcher a pig, a lamb, twenty dog, twenty chicken and forty, fifty rabbit.

GG: So very self-sustaining. And that’s when you realized you liked it.

Philippe:  I look at this (cooking) and it was interesting and after that school was not interesting to me.

GG: So before we get to school, are you married?

Philippe: Was.

GG: Children?

Philippe: Two children. One is twenty-eight and coming to very soon, she lives right now in Edenburough and in May on the twenty-third she is moving back to the United States with her husband to live in Oklahoma.

GG: Now are any of your children looking into a culinary career?

Philippe: The last one wanted to, then didn’t want to, then wanted to, then didn’t want to, she is twenty now.

GG: So she is figuring out what she wants. Would you recommend a culinary career?

Philippe: No

GG: Why?

Philippe: Because when you are on TV and all that there is a lot of glamour, but if you have to start, in a real kitchen when friends or family say " Hey lets go have fun Saturday night, you can't because your cooking, or if you want to spend Friday night with your family, you cant because your cooking. On Christmas day, you can’t, your cooking. On New Year’s Day, you can’t your cooking. On Easter, you can’t your cooking, on your birthday etc.…

GG: So it’s very hard on family life.

Philippe: Family life? That’s why I am not married.

GG: So it’s very difficult to balance?

Philippe: Yes, especially when you want to do it well and you are motivated like this, my ex wife, she tells me "I’m not your wife, your kitchen is your wife and after that I am your mistress."

GG: I understand, I understand. So now you have a full immersion into cooking because of your family and where you moved to, when was the point where you decided that you really wanted to be a chef, when did that happen for you?

Philippe: When I came to Canada. At the time, Montréal especially, was like the United States was in the nineties or eighties lets say, just getting into the gourmet stuff. Canada was just getting on the wave of gourmet food, good gourmet wine. So because of my training and everything else I was more into restaurants at the time, started like that…

GG: And how old were you?

Philippe: I was seventeen or eighteen.

GG: What do you mean by training? Talk about your training.

Philippe: I trained in France its called apprenticeship of chef, so you do three years. You have a couple of days every week to study then the rest you are working in the restaurant hands on.

GG: What did you do the first job?

Philippe: I was a prep cook what we call here a prep cook with peeling potatoes, peeling whatever, but I have also was a dishwasher.

GG: So you did a little of everything. We find that with most chefs that we talk to their first job was dishwasher and or prep cook.

Philippe: Yes and I was doing prep whenever the dishwasher was there.

GG: How old were you?

Philippe: I was fourteen or fifteen.

GG: So you knew then at 14, (you wanted to cook)?

Philippe: I didn’t really know but I said to myself, "Okay I want to try this.

GG: So you say you moved to Montréal and made the decision, what happened to you that made you decide yes this is what I want to do?

Philippe: Well, it was working with good chefs. One chef in particular was nice. Jon Pecilou was one of the chefs in Canada. I trained with him a couple of years It was a small restaurant, he came up behind me and said "Wow, you do not have too much experience in restaurants, I’ll teach you whatever you don’t know." And that’s it. I knew a little because of the teaching of my grandmother, he picked me out and he explained to me "Well you do this because of this. Your teachings at school and in apprenticeships, you forget why. You put this with this because it enhances the flavor. The fat of the cream reduces the sauce and as soon as I started to understand the reasons or why's of cooking I knew that it was more interesting then anything else I could be doing.

GG: So he was really giving you the science of cooking?

Philippe: Yes, yes! And then there was the reading. You want to read up a lot and you learn the chemistry of food.

GG: Now that was one culinary inspiration for you do you have another?

Philippe: Well, there was a lot of reading I did, Kolinsky you know and  the big chefs of the eighteenth and seventeenth century and nineteenth century, Brillat-Savarin were the people who started high end cooking. Cooking for the king and the prince and all that. And the Ritz Carlton, Mr. Ritz, they started the food chemistry, the adding, and the writing of recipes.

GG: Everything that you know and love. One of the things that we wanted to talk to you about was your philosophy on food, and when we came in the other night you started to share a bit of that. About your grandmother and that’s actually a life inspiration.

Philippe: Yes

GG: I know that helps to develop your philosophy on food so tell us a little bit more about that and how that affects not just how you cook but how other chefs cook today. You mentioned the spotlight on chefs give me your philosophy on all of that.

Philippe: Well, right now there is a movement of cooking. I have an idea to do sushi but for desserts, with raw fruits and caramelized sauce instead of fish, using a rice that is sweet rice instead of plain sticky rice. And have a California roll for dessert.

That is just an example, but I see world wide in cooking things like that a lot. So it’s the multilization, politics, they don’t want to do that. I saw a Chinese chef in Hong Kong doing a dehydrated foie gras, I saw that and I want to know, and sit with him or email him and say "Hey okay your really doing that! He wants to change the recipe, Chinese recipes, that are over two thousand years old and that is really beautiful to me. Because, it is always putting a twist on everything. Like putting a little taste of Africa in something American, like a burger.

GG: That fusion, that’s the word now fusion.

Philippe: Yes but fusion also means that you have to put it all together ,but that doesn’t mean you can't have specified food  from a country like Te-ching or Morocco. Sometimes it's perfect in the way it is supposed to be done.  CocoVin... so you have the kidney and heart and all the parts of the chicken. That recipe has been lost because nobody uses those parts. People in America will not eat that. They are like, "Blech, that is not good."

GG:  I see your focus as becoming more adventurous with the palette.

Philippe: With the palette, yes. I’m doing a menu now, I'm trying to put a group of twenty people for a chef’s table with different cusines., I know some people in Fort Myers like kidney, they like sweet bread, things like that, but not to many restaurants are doing that , so what I want to do is a Chefs Table. I don’t want more than twenty people because after that the execution will not be good.. But I'm going to concentrate on awkward food like tureen of rabbit, that you don’t have at all the restaurants. Lately the fad is the meat of the rabbit.

GG: That’s that fad right now.

Philippe:  Fad, trend, whatever you want to call it. But I want to do a simple tureen of rabbit as an appetizer and go on with something…

GG: Something traditional....

Philippe: Something traditional and yet not traditional like sweet bread with something else or throat of a grouper if I can find some.  Maybe I have baby octopus sautéed in ink. That’s a traditional Italian or Greek style. All over the Mediterranean they know how to do this. And so that’s the kind of thing that warms me up. If people are interested in that, it warms me up. And I am thinking also of put as a dessert leachy stuffed with hot things, or stuff it with coffee and chestnuts.

GG: One of favorite fruits is the leachy.

Philippe: Yes, I’m going to take the leachy, stuff it with coffee ad chestnuts and do a dish with that.

GG: That’s a great combination because Asians love chestnuts, they love them.

Philippe: Yes, so that’s part of the story. Combination or no combination. I love to mix it up. You have Boulle in Spain doing his own molecular cuisine. And everybody wants to do it. At the moment it is excessively expensive. You have in the United States and Canada, only have few people who want to try. There is only about 5 or 6.

GG: Achitz is doing it in Chicago.

Philippe: Yes, but it’s not the same cuisine you have here.

GG: You have to have adventurous diners.

Philippe: Not only diners, but the way you situate, locate your cuisine and everything else, you have to have and white tables. In your kitchen, different things gas and liquid…

GG: You have to have what I call the chefs toys....

Philippe: Yes, yes! Enzymes and things, pineapple enzymes for meat are supposed to be good, I have not tried but I cannot get the pineapple enzyme. But I’m trying to look at this with an open mind, and see if I can bring something in this kitchen with different flare. It’s expensive or not, we’ll see about that Are  people here available to do that, customers…

GG: And that’s our next question. What are your thoughts on the market here in south Florida versus others that you have worked in Canada for instance? What’s the biggest difference that you see?

Philippe: Without being bad about our market here, it is an aging market. There are some young and the baby boomers who used to back pack all over Europe who wants to taste food. They get it. But the baby boomers are not coming to just Florida but all over the United States. And this Southwest Florida in the next ten years will redefine itself in what’s going on because the ex-world war people who own half the houses and who going to give them to their grand kids…

GG: Well, it’s a generational shift...

Philippe: Yes.

GG: But how is it now?

Philippe: It is we don’t know yet, it is in the transition and we don’t know the where, the when, or the how.

GG: Well, say you have your restaurant in Chicago or New York or Toronto, what would you do differently then you do here?

Philippe: Well I had a restaurant in Toronto and I want to go back to that way od cooking. My idea is to go every three or four days to the market and get everything nice, sweet and fresh, having a big board and doing the chef’s table everyday. So every three or four days changing the five or six menu items, Have it fresh and that’s it. Of course you cannot do that with one hundred and fifty seats, it’s a little more difficult.

GG: Your kind of limited on that, but your still using fresh, market, fresh, fresh, fresh!

Philippe: Yes, fresh, fresh, fresh!

GG: But you have less ability to change the menu, people expect to have the same thing all the time.

Philippe: Yes, exactly well the expectation here in South Florida is they are coming here every six months, and wanting to see the same menu at the same restaurants. I have people who came in last year who said "Oh, my god I loved your grouper" But the grouper I had last year is gone, I mean I cannot make a grouper all year long especially now, it is impossible. I put on special, because it is better to use as a special. Because like this I have the ability to know its fresh and not something that came from Thailand or from the other side of the world. But people say "Oh well you know your grouper was amazing, when you change your menu why don’t you put it?

GG: Okay, so what I’m hearing from you is that because of economic reasons you menu is more driven by those who come. How do you find a way to give yourself an outlet for that creative side mixed in, or do you?

Philippe: Yes, I do with the special that I do, with the chef’s table that I do, also with a special event also that I can show what I’m capable of and with the menu that I have it’s a bit different then any food what anyone has around here. I mean there are some beautiful chefs around here but and we have specialties that we do and mine is personalized in the restaurant that I have and the menu that we made together with the owner.

GG: So what’s your biggest frustration about your menu?

Philippe: As a chef who likes little places and things like that who would love to work in a smaller place, its having a menu at all.

GG: Having a menu at all?

Philippe: Yes, having a menu at all.

GG: Oh ok. Now I’ll ask you in reverse what do you like best about your menu?

Philippe: Things that I have invented like the scallops with the caramel sauce, things like the shrimp cocktail that the sauce is completely different then you find anywhere else, the sea bass with the ginger bourbon and things like that…

GG: So things you can be creative with.

Philippe: Yes, that is what I love.

GG: So let’s talk about your series of jobs that got you here…

Philippe: First it was Montréal. My first job was at an airport. They hire me as an assistant butcher. I was 17 with the experience of cooking, but wanting to do anything, I couldn’t find a job, so I went to work for the butcher.

GG: Still in the kitchen.

Philippe: Yes but in the kitchen and I didn’t know anybody in Montréal and I remember my first day we received twenty halves of beef and I was a skinny boy and I had to transport all that on my shoulders and the butcher said to me " You have to do it." And some thirty beef leg, hind legs. I was dead after my the first day and it went on and on, but it's ok. Then the second job was the Ritz Carlton…

GG: That’s a big job.

Philippe: Yes, but I had the experience and I showed them that I had the experience. So I was at the Ritz Carlton as an associate helper. I was a associate helper I was like the one, "you do this and you do that" and you do it, like everyday. I need twenty liters of hollandaise everyday and twenty liters of béchamel, everyday, twenty liters of marinade, everyday. And so I used to arrive in the morning and put all the gas on and everything else that help me know how to make all the hollandaise and béchamel and marinade everyday…

GG: You were an expert.

Philippe: Yes well, I was like, Look, I know too much let’s change the subject. And I went to my chef and was like look I want to change, I’m tired of hollandaise, and all that and we split on everything else.

GG: Where’d you go from there?

Philippe: Well, I change and I worked for the, which at the time, first class of Air France which who was the Ritz Carlton and I was making all the sauce for the first class of Air France. And I dealt with champagne and cheese and champagne sauce with the lamb. Then I have the job, my friend and mentor, who took my under his wing for a small restaurant and that started to really interest me, after three of four years of doing a little bit of everyone elses' job that guy showed me how to do it. And I stayed with him exactly two or three years, but I stayed. I didn’t work for anybody else. We were doing twelve, thirteen hour days no vacation, barely any days off, I mean we were closed on Mondays all the time but that was fun. I mean me and him and the dishwasher and we had thirty seats and actually he was the one who gave me a taste of putting a huge board out and he was writing everything like almost a bistro in France, but higher end.

GG: What I hear from you is that is because that menu takes creative everyday, its not that same recipe, I got to come with that fresh ingredient and lets see what we can do, so I'm going to go back to your philosophy. It's that creation all the time, that constant challenge to yourself to come up with something new. Absolutely, very exciting!

Philippe: Yes, but not only that. For me, having the same menu for one or two years is boring. Once I know the system and I have to recreate something, I know what I have to do. At one point it's like a doing a book. The first time the book is interesting. The second time it's interesting, like a painting, once you finish it and your know how it looks there are a lot of painters who say, "I know how it looks now and I know I'm going to need touch ups but that’s all I need." I want to start something else, with new creation and that’s how it is for me with cooking.

GG: So now you have your mentor who really injected you with a love for this, where did you go from there?

Philippe: I went to Toronto, I got three years in Toronto and then after that…

GG: How did you get here?

Philippe: Well, I got divorced, and my brother-in-law knew someone in Sanibel Island who needed a chef.

GG: That was the Thistle?

Philippe: No it was the Rivera, they had two restaurants at the time and needed a chef and so I came to Sanibel, in 95 and I stayed ten years with that company, and then after that we went our separate ways because of changes. Then I went to the Thistle Lodge for one year and I was kind of down not on luck but I was down because nothing was happening. And I say I might go back to Montréal, regroup see the family, go to Montréal and regroup and then come back to Amaerica. Not here, but I was thinking Washington, Seattle anywhere just to see, then a friend of mine surprised me and said. " There is something you have to see. " She didn’t tell me anything about it. She presented me to Jason, the owner and we struck a deal almost that day. Since then I am here.

GG: So now what’s the most important thing for you in the kitchen?

Philippe: You mean the most important thing for me?

GG: The one thing you say 'In my kitchen there must be this......"

Philippe: Passion for cooking. Secondly, everything has to be a little bit fun to do, I mean not a boring guy who comes and says Hi, I mean I am anything but boring in the kitchen. I hate boring. I want change, like, Hi how are you? Are you ready to work? Yes? Let’s go! This is time to go and let's do this and have a little bit of oomph, that’s what I like. And service, time is, at that time its like we have one hundred people, we going to do it and we are going to do it fine. This is the moment, everything is defined for this time…

GG: Not tomorrow not yesterday, but right now…

Philippe: Right now lets do it, my cooks are ready I can see them, they are biting their nails  waiting for that first table is boring but then you have 3 tables, four tables and you know that your going to have a lot of work and it’s going to be hard, but at the same time you don’t feel it because your into it and that it.

GG: And you’re also getting feed back from your clientele…

Philippe: Not even that, its just pure simple adrenaline rush of this.

Louis: Yes, I’m an ex-musician of eleven years and I know exactly what your saying, there’s all that preparation which is boring, boring and then there’s that five minutes when your watching all the people coming into the theater and then you're on and you forget everything else…

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Philippe: Yes and now there’s the show!.You know what we call in France, the stove and oven? We call it the piano, the guy who plays the piano and now its time to play, let’s go!

Philippe: Yes, but it’s a old, really old recipe from France. For that chef’s table, I am going to do a goat leg slightly roasted with hay. I am going to have hay soaked in water and I am going to finish with goat leg cooked in the hay. I  want to have lamb brain, there are few people who want lamb brain, Bersalou. You take the whole baby lamb head and you split it in two and you roast it like that then you take white beans, spicy white beans and you roasted in the oven and spread it like that.

GG: This is not the market for that…

Philippe: I know, that why you take twenty people…

GG: ....who are willing, who know what they are are coming for.

Philippe: Yes exactly, for twenty people, you advertise in the newspaper and that’s that. I have a recipe of a veal liver, which is breaded inside with pork fat, take out the skin and roast it for half an hour with bay leaves and garlic, with a sauce that is raspberry vinegar and demi-glaze. You slice the liver slowly and its pinkish inside and its just perfect…

GG: Okay no more, I’m drooling! Now when we talk,  you’re speaking about things that are outside the box. For where people are in this market today however, they are only intersted in traditional "Florida" foods. For us and for Gourmet Girl readers, this is really exciting cuisine because we’re foodies. There are a number of people who I can think of that would jump at a chance to experience that.

When you look at that and you look at the trend today what do you think is passé like too much, enough already?

Philippe: There is the Italian old fashioned cooking, the pasta and everything like that, but that does not mean that it is not good. I don’t want to say names but there are three or four huge companies who is making pastasand such. But, there is a huge slice of customers that go for that and its sad, because they are missing out on the things that are wonderful. The chef who is a little more gourmet, becomes inaccessible, you are not accessible, the guy who is eating a veal chop in a 'chain ' is paying about the same amount as one that is very good veal or pork chop here.

GG: And they don’t know it, and that’s what we’re all about…

Philippe: They don’t know it and they suspect that we are more expensive and it’s not. go to a chain, it may be good, but  you’re going to be served by young kid who doesn’t know anything about things who brings their boyfriends or girlfriends to the bar and that makes them "IN". They are going to go there because they can have martinis with kids and they are "IN".

GG: Unsophisticated, who don’t know what good eating is about.

Philippe: In San Francisco. In Chicago,  you can go to that chain and the have a certain caliber of food, you know your not just going to have angus beef, you are going to have the mushrooms how they like, because they have a special arrival of mushrooms, and…

GG: There is no deviation…

Philippe: Yes, no deviation, it is not the way you want they send it back and say to the delivery man "it is not what we want go away." Can not do that. I try to keep my things really fresh but I like to change stuff .

GG: So it's almost like for restaurants to survive here, they have to have a portion of the menu that are standards, you don’t deviate. It's just there and it s for people who don’t want to make an effort to find out about anything more. They just want to go out to eat. No two ways about it, but you also want to be able to have that person in the party who wants to be a little more adventurous, so your satisfying that part of the party as well. Like instead of the steak med/rare they might say "oh I want to try that Moroccan dish that is infused with saffron, I don’t know what that is…" And that’s what you’re trying to do…

Philippe: Yes, that’s what we try to do; it’s hard to do, because most people say "Oh he is going there, well I will go there too."

GG: Well, I think that is a survival mechanism for restaurants down here. Everyone has the same things on the menu everywhere you go. Macadamia encrusted grouper, etc..

One thing that I noticed when we dined here is that you like to go out and talk to the people, your diners and you have that personal interaction. I know when you came and spoke with us you are all lit up but it was not a show, you genuinely had an interested about what we had to say. Why is that important to you?

Philippe: Because I show that I am confident in my food at least, I mean if there is something wrong then I go and, I am even proud even when something is wrong and I'm sorry but I will go and fix it. What I mean when something is right then I am happy and I want to know. "Would you be happier with something else? Do you like everything, how is everything?" Ask me about why I did the dish. I have a lot of people that ask, "What gave you that idea for that?" And that excites me because that means they are interested.

GG: They’re paying attention to the dish…

Philippe: Yes paying attention to the dish

GG: So its validating your creativity and on the other hand , for Jason, its validating that your creativity is appreciated by the clientele.

Philippe: Yes, I think so I mean if you have your name on the menu and you don’t show yourself then that means you hide yourself your not confident, you know

GG: Well, lets talk about that. With chefs in Southwest Florida what would you like to see more from them?

Philippe: Well my peers I know some of them are extremely well, I mean there are some really good guys and they are trying to do their jobs and man is it hard in this environment. I know how they feel and that’s basically it. I know how they feel because I am there with them. And we try, I have been with other chefs and we talk about it and we want change. That’s why there is Cru, that’s why there is other things, that’s why there is Toro and things like that. Some work and some don't. Independants are trying to do something different then the chains.

GG: To talk to them and or put an article out or a spotlight on it what do they need to do so that people are like "Wow I need to check this out?

Philippe: People trying new things, I mean until we hit something people try and are not afraid to try, there are some people who, commericially speaking, it's not that good. But, it's going to happen one day. We are going to do something about new creative cooking. Let’s have more of a reunion of chefs Let's have more exchange. You know there is a kind of competition between chefs.

GG: Well there has to be because it is business, everyone is searching for the Friday night and Saturday night diners, come to my place! No  com to my place!

Philippe: Exactly, but there is this thing where it's like; I want to try and do this, I want to try and do that. I used to have in Montreal a small club like, four or five chefs, different houses and having fun with a bottle of wine, you bring this and you bring this and I do this and you make that appetizer. I want to try and have that here, not only a competition. We want to try and have an Iron chef…

GG: Ok so we’re on the same page, you want to make a chef club, you think chef’s need to get together?

Philippe: Yes, of course, not only that but exchange ideas like why are you doing this this way? Not only getting ideas from recipes but the why you are doing it this way, can we do it another way and things like that or maybe we cook something else

GG: Do you think that is important for the very survival of fine dining down here?

Philippe: Not only here, but all over, yes!

GG: That chefs are all on the same page as a community talking about how are we attracting…

Philippe:  It's a dying breed, gourmet chefs, Because of what is happening with all kinds of things, it’s a dying breed. Look at France where there is a need for chefs. You’re having kids who are twenty and three-fourths don’t seem like they know much about cooking.After three years of training, in five years they wont be cooking anymore.

GG: Do you think that the food network and something like that has helped to bringing more attention to this want of cooking? Do you think that will help change that?

Philippe: I hope so…

GG: I know you hope but is it?

Philippe: For that we have to wait and see. In two or three years when the markets pick back up at least, I hope so. For now let’s hunker down, do what the customer, wants.

Philippe: It is difficult for a chef to do that. The market has, because of the beer. Even the water is dated so I have to be very creative with things and use them in my dishes. I have to be really, really, really, creative. Well, that unique and its probably good for them to have you. My friend who is the chef over there, of the market, is doing a superb job, what he is doing,  dealing everyday with a lot of stuff.

Philippe: Information, informing yourself on such things to new things, I don’t even have close information about what is going on with the different spices. You have to go and find out about new spices, new food, I don’t remember the substitute for sugar that is a tree. I don’t have it in my mind but it's just a tree that you can grow at home.It's that’s not that new but in Southwest Florida, we don’t have information like this. And people will not come to you and say I want you to try this. Let’s try this one this is new, and in that way you can be the center of what is new you don’t see wings of ray here, on the west coast and it’s not because we don’t have them it is because nobody wants to buy it.

GG: And there is a whole gulffull of them right here, so what your talking about is having a resource that is already available locally and profiling that and have it available for chefs who can turn it around and make it available for the public, very interesting.

Philippe: And that’s why I am amazed with the discussion and I would have a central talk about everything. In Canada there is a group or government thing who help you find whatever you wanted to have or would put in contact with a chef or local producer of what you were looking for. We don’t have that here, we don’t have that kind of movement here, you have local fruit, local vegetables, local fisherman who can catch anything from shrimp to skate, and a little bit of every fish we have but in certain quantities and follows regulations but is right here.

GG: Its almost like the fisher suppliers from dock’s ports who calls up an chef and says I have this and the chef says I’ll take it.

Philippe: Yes, but you don’t have here much knowledge of that. The government didn’t took over that, or the chamber of commerce or lee county doesn’t have anything to help chefs locate anything. I phone everywhere in Florida looking for instance the guy who produces the tomatoes...

GG: So you’re looking to find that connection with a micro green grower locally…

Philippe: Micro-green , who knows what simple food, simple and fair, you know?

GG: So where do tyou get you ingredients?

Philippe: The big local producer, that’s all I can get. I wish I had a guy, a farmer, who comes and says to me, not only with that but also with the pork producer and the lamb producer. There is a lot of goat here too and you know there is a winery right here outside of Ft. Myers, going to Immokalee. I pass by many times and he closed a lot because it is not right season for him, but maybe he could go and talk with chefs and adapt this wine, just for example like the goat guy, maybe making goat cheese around here, a little place, you don’t need one hundred fifty goats Like a little bouquet of cheese.

GG: Okay now we’re going to talk a little more about you and away from food. I understand you are adventurous with food but you also like adventure in other ways like diving I hear, so tell us where you learned and where’s your favorite location?

Philippe: I used to dive, and I don’t to it as much anymore because of my job, but I was supposed to do it professionally at one point. It was that or cooking, and I choose to cook. But I love to dive.

GG: Where did you learn?

Philippe: Oh in France and then I go in Spain…

GG: Do you still go when you get the chance?

Philippe: When I can, yes

GG: Where’s your favorite place to dive?

Philippe: When I have the time I go up in the Keyes and after that Belize.

GG: What is it about that, that you love?

Philippe: If you knew me you would never have to ask that. I love the water and I love to be in the water, I don’t want to be next to it like fishing and all that, I love to be in it for hours and hours. You put me in snorkels, not even a tank, I love to see what’s going on in the water, it’s a different world, everything is new to me, they all do everything different, your not in your element its like hello, im renting you the place. And I love sea food and I love fish and oysters, and urchins and its all part of an experience. I love kayaking and love exploring.

GG: So you really love nature then?

Philippe: Inside the water and outside the water, and the sad thing is that here in Fort Myers, you go hunting or walking you don’t go to far, there is too much of the woods that are not to very friendly. Up north you can go, but here with the little bits of red cedar and all the vegetation, you can not walk in the woods .I watched a guy go with a machette.

GG: Well, the type of floral greenery are razor sharp here, it’s definitely never an autumn walk in the woods, up north you can walk all the time…

Philippe: I remember I used to take my daughter mushroom hunting up north. You can’t do anything like that here, there are little things called spiders and snakes that will bite you .

GG: Well, that’s the tropics…

Philippe: Yes, well I have been to Brazil before so…

GG: Yes, you must be careful…So what are you favorite cuisine to cook?

Philippe: To cook myself, anything that interests me or anything new I don’t really have a favorite one.

GG: Is there one you won’t cook? Besides, pasta with red sauce, ha-ha-ha…

Philippe: You said it, I think that’s so boring, I worked for a nice Italian restaurant, the Rivera is a northern Italian restaurant and it was good, I mean there is some good about it when it’s not a chain that does a hundred and fifty thousand people a day, and you cook it by the ton. No there isn’t anythingI would not cook. I would cook Japanese or Chinese but nothing that was too weird.

GG: Okay favorite item on the menu, right now…

Philippe: Right now, my scallops.

GG: Okay, junk food?

Philippe: Chinese food…

GG: No, no I mean like mms or chips or cookies…

Philippe: Chips.

 GG: When you’re not here, besides diving and kayaking ,what do you do?

Philippe: Read and TV…

GG: Read and television?

Philippe: Yeah or I’m eating at other restaurants…

GG: What kind of things do you like to read?

Philippe: Science, history, especially right now, I have a French book on history and I get monthly books on science and history. You don’t have to much of science that I can understand, it gets too technological in English, so I bring everything in that from Montréal. I am always reading science and history and cooking, I think it's better for me than then American maybe because I read it better. I can see the new trends in France and show you the food and restaurants.

GG: How many languages do you speak?

Philippe: Really truly I speak three, I speak French and Spanish and I can understand a little bit of Arabic and a little bit of Italian but very little. I would pick up more in Arabic and in Italian and German. I can make myself understand I think ha-ha. Maybe with a hand and speaking, I can make myself understand.

GG: So what the most amusing thing that has happened to you in the kitchen?

Philippe: Well, there is a few, I got a burn on some parts that I had to get naked in the kitchen, with a pastry sheet pans with boiling steak. I was young when this happened, and being plated in front of a hundred and fifty people. There was some grease on the floor and I slipped and got covered from the grease of the boiling steaks and first, I caught all the steaks that were falling and then I realized that I was burning. I take off my jacket and pants and everything else, because it was…

GG: So you were the first naked chef?

Philippe: Yes…

GG:  I’m sure that you can laugh at it now, but im sure you weren’t laughing that day…

Philippe: No, at the time that was not funny, but now it is funny.

GG: How about a mistake something that a chef said, What are you doing?

Philippe: I did several, but I tell you I was a chef of the restaurant in a huge hotel in Montreal and I went to the central cuisine and they were making mushroom soup. They had their own vinaigrette and they had the same color and the same consistency. I brought one part here on the cart and the other part there, sadly enough it was a huge pan of mushroom soup and I leave on the table and was doing something else. The dishwasher came up and thinking it was the same dumped the vinaigrette into the mushroom soup and I didn’t know. I’m mixing and everything and I start to serve the mushroom soup and now my chef say's.  "You took two gallons of vinaigrette and I need that." "Well chef, I don’t know where they are" "But you brought them!" "They were there. I don’t know." And I look in the dishwasher and I see the empty container and I ask the dishwasher Where did you put the vinaigrette?"  And he said, "In the soup."  And the chef, he said, "No no no, he didn’t do that. Well quickly let’s taste it!' And we taste it, and it wasn’t bad, so we  served it.

GG: So it was a vinaigrette-mushroom soup that day! Well you said you like unique and different.

Philippe: Oh it was certainly unique,  but I mean my chef accepted it because it doesn’t taste that bad. Some chefs would say that they would never do that, and others will say, Oh well I would do that…

GG: A lot of chefs we talk to say adapt and move on…

Philippe: yes, yes…

GG: So what your last meal?

Philippe: Oyster, lamb and dessert Paris Brest, It’s a puff pastry like an éclair, filled with hazelnut whipped cream. Not available over here.

GG: Tell us something about yourself, your career or your profession, that is a must know for those entertaining a culinary career?

Philippe: You have to be committed if you are a young kid and you want to do that the commitment you were dumb and if you want to go to school you have to know that it is going to be rough, tough and you cant go and say oh its all going to be peachy, I’m going to be a chef right after school, it isn’t going to happen only unless your very good and you are a star, that barely ever happens, the rest is commitment and expect that the job doesn’t pay well at first, and you will have to do things that you don’t want to do and you do it anyway and hours you don’t want to spend but you are going to do it anyways otherwise forget about it,

GG: I think there is a major difference between cooks and chefs and it takes hard work to be a chef, what do you see on the horizon?

Philippe: Retirement and a boat a sailboat and then getting some people and gaining a little bit of money with that boat and that’s it.

GG: So you are going to charter then?

Philippe: Just like you want to go there ok fine we go…

GG: Leave us with something about you that your diners and our readers would not expect...

Philippe: Well, talking like this, you wouldn’t believe that I am shy I am really shy when I have to talk in front of more the a hundred people I don’t like to do that I’m like I don’t want it thank you very much, but talking to one or two or three I love it because its personal level, but I am really, really shy.

GG: Well thank you for you time today

Phillipe: Thank you.