Her restaurant was always full, and yet Claire Vallée ended up throwing in the towel, exhausted by the consequences of a post-covid wave that looked like a tsunami. Six months after the closure of Ona, her 100% plant-based table, the first of its kind rewarded by the Michelin Guide, the chef details the current difficulties in the restaurant industry and gives some ideas for the future. This former carnivore also recalls why she embarked on a cuisine exclusively of “non-animal origin” and how she managed to make it sexy, as we can see on his Instagram account.
“I brought back mimosa flowers and pine needles from the Bassin d’Arcachon”, she announces, before preparing one of the signature dishes extracted from his book, a plate called “Le Printemps”, delicate and colorful, made of strawberries and asparagus in all their forms with pistachio and chlorophyll tuiles and a grilled grapefruit pomegranate vinaigrette. A recipe in five parts to discover on video from April 17 to 21 in the new Tempo section of the 20 minutes.
On October 31, you announced on the verge of tears the closure of your Ona restaurant in Arès (Gironde). When did you realize you were at an impasse?
The impasse was not at the level of the clientele because we already had three, four months in advance on reservations with good press. The concern I encountered was not financial. I was told “yes, vegan restaurants suck after a year”, but six years after its opening, Ona was a really long-lasting business. What happened is that with the Covid, the staff began to find freedom, time with family, with friends. No matter how generous we were, with only four services in the evening and two at lunch on the weekend, having ten weeks of vacation and closing two weeks at the start of each season while we put together a new menu, we still lost jobs , especially indoors. We also had waves of Covid with employees who fell ill and whom we did not know how to replace. So that in the end, it cracks and we no longer want.
Raising wages, it was not possible?
I did that too, but it wasn’t enough. When we cook, it’s to give ourselves pleasure and give it to our customers, but if this chain is broken, it’s no longer possible. Because of the stress, I had to stop and close for two months. A lot of customers were mad at me, but when out of twelve employees, you’re missing four or five who tell you “No, but I’m quitting. I want to leave the restaurant business, I no longer want to work at night”, how do you do it?
How to deal with the inflation which today makes the restaurant an expensive exit?
It is indeed becoming very expensive to do catering, especially of quality. Inflation necessarily affects prices. We have less of this problem when we buy low-end products. But when you try to promote the quality of the work of small producers, who have to be remunerated at their fair value, it becomes very complicated.
Can plant-based cuisine be a solution: aren’t herbs, fruits and vegetables cheaper than meat or fish?
It’s not cheaper, if it’s done right. But it’s one of the solutions, that’s for sure. Not the only one because we cannot remove the meat or the fish which are sometimes the only wealth of a region. But it is one of the solutions, in particular to reduce carbon emissions. Often, we forget that to produce beef or chicken, we produce soy that comes directly from the Amazon forest and we deforest thoroughly. So yes, vegetable food is one of the solutions. But you also have to see how it’s done because with intensive circuits, spraying glyphosate isn’t better for your health or the environment. And in some countries, where cocoa or coffee are grown intensively, it is much worse.
However, these are very high consumption products.
Precisely, the intensive collection of cocoa leads to human abuse. And you have to deforest to plant cocoa trees, which leads to mistreatment for the soil and for the animals that are around. Coffee is complicated to do without it but there is also a lot of abuse behind it. When you have people who are paid with a slingshot to fetch sacks of coffee on their backs… Virtuous circles exist, but when you buy your €3 coffee at the supermarket, you cannot expect it to be made in good conditions. I know that not everyone has the money to be able to afford beautiful products. But in this case, it might be necessary to eliminate certain products and give meaning to others as well. We can make barley coffee, roasted cereal grain coffees, or go back to chicory which is local.
Wanting to eat at the best price, isn’t that legitimate in times of inflation?
Of course ! But you can find very good prices by returning to more local values, and seasonal too. Only that will save the planet a little. Stop thinking that you can eat whatever you want whenever you want, strawberries or tomatoes in January for example. Are people ready for this? I know that there are many of us on the planet, that it’s complicated to feed everyone properly, but I think there are things to review, that’s for sure. And if you do it with small producers who are well paid, it will still be better than with big companies who are not virtuous and who do just about anything. If you want to bite into a little chocolate, why not, but choose chocolate made in good conditions. It’s like meat: focus on quality, which will have a price, even if you eat it less often. In France, we are at 80% intensive farming. When we are shown animals running and happy, it doesn’t exist, it’s com.
Have you ever found yourself confronted with what you call the meat, milk or intensive farming lobbies?
No, because I’m not militant enough for them. I’ve emancipated myself a bit since the sale of the restaurant, because with the status of a starred chef, you’re not here to play politics. However, I am convinced that eating is a political act. And cook too. There is a recipe with chocolate in my book Non-animal origin, but personally, I don’t cook it anymore. Excluding foods that are not virtuous and whose intensive cultivation pollutes the planet, of course, is militant. Do only vegetable, too.
How do you manage to re-enchant your dishes despite everything?
My “sexy” kitchen? Already, we eat with our eyes, so that’s very important, in the colors, in the cuts, in the volumes of the plates too. And then there is necessarily the taste with the different varieties, the different intensities of taste that we can have in the acidity, in the bitterness, in the salt, in the sugar. It’s umami, this “essence of delight” in Japanese, or fifth flavor. Through plants, umami is very important. It’s my cuisine: a punchy, sexy cuisine which, I think, is one of the cuisines of the future.
Precisely, your future, how do you envisage it?
Right now, the social climate and inflation are making things a little stuck, but hey, I’m not despairing. I moved to Paris since March 1 in an Airbnb. I take advantage of my days to walk, think, read and get inspired. I have traveled a lot in recent months, to Mexico, to Polynesia where they have very special preservation techniques, to South Korea where I have learned a lot about fermentation. What concerns me at the moment is finding how we can work with food over time, through fermentation, lacto fermentation, drying, which is very present in Asia, because we could dry a lot of food and rehydrate them afterwards. Restaurants have become extremely energy-intensive and there is also an urgent need to review our working methods in the kitchen, that is to say in gestures, in daily life, but also with the help of new techniques… Imagine what will be the cuisine of the future, that’s kind of been my leitmotif since I left the restaurant.