La Gourme offers a menu based on a gastronomic culture of quality craftsmanship: traditional recipes, generous portions, first-rate ingredients, not many surprises. The taste of continuity. The restaurant’s philosophy is clear: here, the chef is at the service of the ingredients, not the other way around, and this sort of humility is polished to perfection with the delivery of seasonal produce. The customers, too, are regulars rather than adventurers, the kind of people who do not take many risks, who are looking for something they know, or have known, and come here to reactivate a sensory memory—terrine of rabbit with pistachios, seven-hour leg of lamb, grandmother’s apple tart, or that delicately cinnamon-flavored madeleine, to be dipped in a light tea at the end of the meal.

A traditional establishment, La Gourme is one of the last restaurants in Paris to employ a butcher in its kitchen; every night, at about four in the morning, the boss goes to Rungis to bring back various cuts of red or white meat. Back at the restaurant, he places them on his butcher’s chopping board, and they are prepared for the dishes offered on the menu. These exacting standards are the best kind of publicity: here, the meat is good, and everyone knows it.

So, that summer, Mauro discovers bourgeois French cuisine—another planet for this boy who ate his first foie gras at fifteen during a Christmas lunch at his aunt’s house, and for whom the eggs in aspic ordered from the local deli by his grandfather for festive meals represent the height of sophistication—the edible capsule, the iridescent transparency, the delicate colors.

He’s put in the Cold Appetizers department—in other words, anything that is served as a starter and does not need to be cooked afresh—and given a crucial post: the pantry, where the vegetables and the fruit are kept. He acquires a greater knowledge of them and is soon able to assess, by sight, the taste of a tomato, the subtlety of a stalk of asparagus, the crunch of a curly endive. Every day, he puts on a white apron made of thick, rough canvas that sheathes and holds him like a uniform, then he gets to work. The arrangements are simple, and—with the exception of the pâtés, which are presented in polished terra-cotta terrines—all the preparations are made on the plates themselves: tomato salad, herring and potatoes in oil, terrines of chicken liver chutney, egg mayonnaise, avocado and shrimp in cocktail sauce, a seafood platter. And the famous mi-cuit foie gras cooked in a dish towel, served with slices of toasted country bread, then swathed in napkins.