JOHNSON: You use only products from the region in your restaurant. Why? BRAS: The people who provide me with food are more than just producers. There’s a complicity, a strong sense of mutual understanding, among us. I don’t have to ask how they work, or wonder about the products, because I know how they work.
Do you think that the industrialization of food production is a real danger? It’s clear that it’s a threat. But I’m in such a micromarket. I’m a so-called artist, so I’m removed from the disaster that’s out there.
Could it affect you at some point? Maybe, but I’m in an elite world of gastronomy, so it’s different. But what is dangerous is that the consumers, including us, might find ourselves out of touch with what’s happening in the market. It’s too bad we end up having to pay a lot just to have good, healthy food.
As a chef, what role do you think food plays in people’s lives? The American system says that when you eat badly, you compensate for it with drugs of one sort or another: food in pills and things like that. It’s sad. I’m a child of the land. My father worked with horses. My parents were peasants, and I know what happens around the table at mealtime. Food is a vehicle for everything, for the ambience of home, for the atmosphere of it. Food was something we lived. The breakdown of the family is due to television, sure, and other things, but I think it’s also due to the fact that we don’t pay enough attention to the importance of food anymore.
Do you support the farmers in their struggle against the multinationals? In a general sense, yes. It seems like it’s about money more than anything else today. But I’m not optimistic for the small farmers today. They’re going to get eaten up. We have to start a real debate about that, it has to come from [someone more powerful]. These little movements here and there don’t have much effect in the end.
Is it possible to have a globalized economy and still have these small operations? I don’t have the solution–you have to talk to the bankers about that. But there’s definitely some serious work to be done. Possibly at the level of education, with the food that they distribute at school, things like that. If the younger generation prefers the Big Mac because we didn’t teach them what it means to appreciate good food, well, we’ll just be passed by.
A lot of transnational companies claim that they are producing new kinds of food to solve hunger problems. How do you react? I think those are false arguments. There’s a problem with how food distribution is managed. When you see the tons of fruit that are thrown out into the streets every day, you have to think again.
What’s the future of European agriculture? I don’t know. I’m happy to be 50 instead of 20, I can say that. But I think the wisdom of men will one day be stronger than business. There’s a lot more accountability today than before. The mad-cow disease helped a lot.
