From his grandmother, he learned not to waste: vegetables from
leftover pot-au-feu make their way into the next day’s cassoulet.
From Jacques Maximin, the great French chef, he learned to go to
the market and to be inspired by ingredients. “He went to the
market every day at eleven o’clock,” Allegretti recalls fondly.
“And he’d come back and say, ‘We’re going to make this, this,
this, and this.’” From Alain Ducasse, another mentor, he learned to
be very, very picky. “Everything he bought had to be top
quality,” Allegretti tells me.
With so many legendary mentors and so many influences, how
did Allegretti find his own way?
“You see all these different teachings,” he tells me, “and you
pick what you like the most.”
You also incorporate your own passions and prejudices into the
mix. For example, Allegretti makes it a point to stay in good
shape, so health is an important component of his cooking. His
food isn’t too heavy, too buttery, or too salty. “Everything is
balanced,” he explains. “Nothing comes up first in your mouth.”
He also filters other cuisines through his own perspective.
When he once saw a taco on the cover of Food and Wine, it upset
him, he says. “This is Food and Wine magazine and they put a
Mexican taco on the cover?” (Hearing this with his thick French
accent is pretty funny.)
So Allegretti devised his own version of a taco; he made a taco
shell out of a tuille flavored with lavender and then he filled it with
tuna tartare. An authentic taco? Hardly. But a dish by a man