... & Andree is Melanie's grandmother.
I have always been blessed when it comes to food and was born with a huge heritage: French, from a really foodie Lyonaise family... My first gastronomic experience was at Les Trois Gros, St-Etienne, age 3 (although it seems that I've slept much of the meal!); and that was just the beginning. For several years, my family saved some money on the side in order to reunite once a year and eat in a gastronomical restaurant...
Mum was a great cook, always curious about new cuisines, recipes, ingredients; while Dad was so much of a meat lover that by the age of 7 I knew how to recognize and name different cut for a steak (that I could already eat whole and rare)...Yet it's my grandmother's cuisine that I remember the most vividly and dearly, for its magical spell: butter, garlic and tradition. Everything was always so tasty and simple; so comforting. She never wasted anything and had the power to keep people at the table for hours if not for the whole day. What always amazed me was that she could cook without consulting a book, everything by heart, the same way she was taught, and made over and over again. A kind of secret knowledge which kept my sister and I completely mesmerised, up until today.
Years passed, I moved to London and sort of forgot about it. Until one day, I've step into St John Restaurant. To my shame and my ignorance, I had never heard about Fergus Henderson and his revolution. Yet here I was, surrounded by delicacies of my hometown, my grandmother's cuisine: tongue, tripes, livers, brains, the whole pig, nothing wasted... I was back home! The simplicity and the truth of ingredients, tasty bits, honoured how they should be, with reverence, care and love. They were talking to my heart, my roots, my blood. Once again I was spoiled, but this time I was old enough to realize it. This was my fate, my passion, my religion; the truth and nothing but the truth.
I feel I should stop here, but let me just add this: after 2 happy years at St John, I step into another family, or let say another part of that family, the amazing and only true gastropub (at least in my heart), The Anchor & Hope. The rest is history and brought me here in New Zealand. This is Lily & Andree's story...
Melanie Moreau
