Magdalena Rahn
 
L'Etranger
78 Tsar Simeon St

Olivier is obsessed with sugar; he said so himself. I’m with him at L’Etranger, the Sofia restaurant that he created almost seven years ago, and he is using some sort of wire whisk with sugar-coated tentacles to create nests of spun sugar from a saucepan of dark caramelisation: cheveux d’ange (angel’s hair).

He says his interest in sugar started in his first job, when he was a lad of 16 living in his native France. The traiteur (French delicatessen) where he was a shop assistant had an order for a Harley-Davidson to be made completely of sugar, and something about that experience has stuck with him to this day.

Olivier opened L’Etranger after moving to Bulgaria with his Bulgarian wife, and, not having found satisfaction at a comfortable desk job, went on to what inspired him – cooking. Its first two years of existence were on Assen Zlatarov Street, in the Doctors’ Garden neighbourhood. He moved it to its current location on Tsar Samuil Street after the landlord raised the rent exponentially.

The intimate facility he now occupies seats about 38, though it can squeeze in up to 80 people for a buffet – like he had in November for the release of 2007’s Beaujolais Nouveau. Olivier – and until early December, when he hired an evening assistant/line cook, he had always worked solo – occupies a small giraffe-shaped improvised kitchen in the basement.
“Until about two years ago, I had never let anyone enter my kitchen,” he says. “My kitchen is mine, my lair.”

In this space, he prepares everything himself, from the rôti de porc to the crème caramel to the gésiers confits to the vegetable purées and sauces, all according to the French traditions that he learned in cooking for his siblings from the age of 12, and from working in the traiteur, followed by experimentation, self-education and constant reading of French culinary industry journals. Stacks of the magazines, going back a number of years, sit on the bookshelf outside the kitchen. He reads them more for inspiration than for specific new menu items. Next to them sit Le Guide Culinare by Escoffier (“useless, unless you already know everything about cooking and technique”) and Petit Larousse de la Cuisine (“this is the good one”).

We sit at a table downstairs and talk for a bit in the mid-afternoon lull. What really set Olivier off at the beginning was how he would work to prepare a dish, have everything at the correct temperature, exquisite presentation, and deliver it to the customer... who would then light up a cigarette and push the dish aside for 10 or 15 minutes, the food getting cold and coagulated. Since then, he has learnt to adapt to the Bulgarian mentality, and the customers themselves have become more “educated” about fine cuisine.

In our conversation, he conveys a sense of high ideology, the expectation of beauty and finesse and passion as related to food and dining. This, perhaps, is part of why France is lauded for its kitchens and restaurant experiences. And there is another layer that peeks out: that of melancholy as a result of idealisation disappointed. But that is life, and he makes the best of it. He searches out small suppliers that appreciate and maintain certain standards of quality. He buys local when possible. His cooking is clean, thought out, accessible.

“It’s not hard to find the products. What is hard is to find them again – one day it’s there, the next day it’s gone forever.” Other things – consistently good avocados, for example, have proved impossible, so he has had to limit their use; if what is sold as “saffron” in Bulgaria is really saffron; finding vanilla pods or unsalted butter (near futile) – add to the challenge.

And then there is the fact that his cooking is French. In a society that has traditional tastes and is often fearful of something that does not look “typical”, certain foods have been a hard sell. Crème brulé, when he first started making it, was a novelty. People did not know what it was, so he would end up serving it to the customers gratuit. Now, it’s everywhere. His next provocation is the avocado-chocolate soufflé. The avocado lends a distinctive green colour, a mildly riddling taste and a certain depth, while the melted chocolate chunk in the centre complements the sweetened complexity. Diners were unnerved. Olivier has not been dissuaded.

Rabbit with red wine
from Olivier, head chef at L'Etranger

For the marinade
2 bottle of wine
3 carrots, sliced
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
Clove, thyme, whole pepper, allspice

For the dish
1 rabbit
butter, flour, salt and pepper

Drive the clove into the whole onion and combine all the ingredients for your marinade. Marinate the rabbit for 48 hours before cooking. Fry the rabbit in butter at a high temperature until golden. Add the vegetables from the marinade, then some flour. Keep stirring. Then add the rest of the marinade, bring to a boil and simmer for 45 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste shortly before the meal is done.

Serve with a side of mashed potatoes. Alternatively, add one whole egg and two yolks to 1kg og mashed potatoes, mix well, shape into balls and fry or bake.

You can use the recipe for cooking game as well, in which case you can add 100g of dark chocolate to the sauce

Source: Month2Come