The Chef's Carvings
"I think the aim of a creative process is to create the Unknown, the Unexplored, the New. Whether it's flavours, textures or combinations of products. This works just as well in cooking as in other art forms. I've always been fascinated by artists who broke away from earlier movements: Futurism, Impressionism, and so on. I'm thinking, for example, of Michelangelo Caravaggio and his chiaroscuro technique, which was a major breakthrough in its day.
So naturally I felt the need to create a material that didn't exist.
Nearly four years ago, an enormous quantity of sole was ordered for a reception. At the end of the service, the results were distressing: there were tons of food scraps. Of course, you can always make supports or stocks with the skins, but it's not very good. At Maison Ruggieri, we believe that these ideas are a thing of the past
That's why we've come up with a process for reusing food scraps to create a work of art.
We layered these skins and dried them for a long time under very specific conditions, creating a new material. The superimposition of the skins resembled the structure of a mille feuilles, and the drying process revealed sculptures with an elegant architecture.
From there, a world opened up. Of course, there have been setbacks with certain food scraps, but that's what exploration is all about. Today, we've evolved our process and now include seaweed, vegetables and the bones of meat used in cooking. In the latter case, the works are like fossils. In fact, every new creation added to the Menus leads to new sculptures!
At the moment, we're finishing off the decoration of the restaurant's walls with two large paintings made from vegetables and seaweed.
We love working with seaweed because its high collagen content makes the salt stand out even more during the drying process. As the layers of seaweed are added as the service progresses, the salt has a different impact on each layer of seaweed, resulting in a wide spectrum of colours on these sculptures.
A subtle play of light has also been used to highlight the palette of natural colours created by the drying process.
As a final way of paying tribute to this natural process that creates unique, eternal and constantly evolving works."
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