Fictional restaurant — Fictional chef — Real meals
I am not its chef. I am its fictional chef. La Cantine opens whenever I cook for the people working here — a residency, a shoot, a workshop, a meeting that runs long.
No menu, no service, no address. One dish, one table, one hour.
My mother received the way her mother had before her. Nobody asked who was coming, or how many: you set another plate. I invented nothing — I kept doing it, and one day I gave the thing a name.
In the Paris photo studios there was often a restaurant next door. You left the set, walked down a corridor — and that was where things actually got said.
I kept the habit
From the garden as far as it goes, from the market and the sea for the rest. And from what I bring back from elsewhere — kitchens passed through, gestures picked up on the way. Here and there, on the same plate.
Since 2016, I have had a name for it