72 MAY 2019
“MY COOKING IS DEEPLY Mediterranean,” says
Julia Sedefdjian, 24, the most talked-about
young chef in Paris right now. “It’s also
completely produce-driven, which is how
we cook in Nice, my hometown. I go to the
market and decide what I’ll cook once I’ve
seen the quality of the ingredients, not the
other way around—you should never force a
recipe if the right produce isn’t available.”
Sedefdjian’s Latin Quarter restaurant Baieta
(the word means “little kiss” in Niçoise dialect)
has been winning over the French capital’s
most exigent food critics since it opened in
April 2018. “There are two ingredients that are
the same in everything I cook,” Sedefdjian
says with a smile. “Time, because you can’t
hurry good food, and sunshine, because my
food is so southern: southern French, but also
Sicilian (my mother’s family came from Sicily)
and Armenian, which is where my father’s
family comes from.” Sunshine? “Yes, you can
almost taste it in good olive oil and ripe fruit
and vegetables.”
Sedefdjian knew she wanted to cook by
the time she was 12. “I love manual, physical
work,” she explains, so she studied cooking
and pastry in Nice and started working in res-
taurant kitchens as a sous chef when she was
14, eventually becoming chef of Les Fables de
la Fontaine in Paris, where in 2016 at 21 she
became the youngest French chef ever to win
a Michelin star. “What I do at Baieta is revise
traditional Provençal dishes to make them
lighter and fresher. With my ‘bouillabaieta,’
for example, I deconstructed a traditional
bouillabaisse so that the fish is cooked sepa-
rately from the soup. Shorter cooking times
preserve the flavor and texture of the produce
I work with, especially the fish and vegetables
I love. I also like to brighten up the earthy fla-
vors of Niçoise cooking with fresh herbs and a
little bit of acidity, maybe using the juice of the
gentle lemons that grow in Menton near Nice
on the Riviera. At Baieta, my cuisine de soleil
[cooking of the sun] is about bringing some of
the warmth and conviviality of Nice to Paris, a
city where the skies are often gray.” Sedefdjian
tries to get home to Nice to see her family at
least once a month, and she says that regu-
larly eating in her hometown reminds her that
the true points of good cooking are simplicity
and freshness. “This is what Niçoise food is all
about and why it’s so delicious,” says the chef,
who also admits to a relentless craving for her
mother’s ratatouille. “It’s the world’s best,” she
says with a grin. —ALEXANDER LOBRANO
Colorful pastel buildings front
France’s Côte d’Azur.
A
KISS
From the
CÔte D’Azur
eat
In Nice, Sedefdjian adores
Au Rendez-Vous des
Amis (rdvdesamis.fr).
“Every dish is profoundly
local and so is the atmo-
sphere because almost
all of the staff are native
Niçois,” she says. Try the
artichoke terrine and the
sea bass sautéed with
tomatoes and garlic.
NICE
france
Seared Mackerel
with Marinated
Tomatoes
P. 1 0 7
PH
OT
OG
RA
PH
Y:^
YA
DI
D^ L
EV
Y
