Then there’s the renovation. The kitchen is no good, and Jacques and Mauro are already planning to smash the wall of the staircase, move the toilets, and create a sort of micro-kitchen with four stove-top burners and an oven, a small work surface, and a mini-fridge. They will also fix up the little apartment above the restaurant, where Mauro will live. In the end it goes through: the financing is put in place, and in June 2008, Jacques and Mauro sign the deal for 150,000 euros. Just in time: one month later, the beginnings of the crisis appear—the big economic crisis of 2008.

The day before the opening, Mauro solemnly invites me into La Belle Saison. We walk through the room, which seems to be holding its breath, and enter the tiny kitchen, where every inch of space has been assigned a specific use. He slides open drawers and cupboards, runs water from the faucets. I ask him if he knows what he’s getting into; he looks me over and retorts: I don’t think about it, I just do it.

June 18: the day of the opening. La Belle Saison is packed, the thirty-five seats accommodating a few extra people if they squeeze in a little. His friends are all there: the whole gang from Aulnay ordering bottle after bottle, the family, and the neighbors they met during the renovation. In his miniature kitchen, Mauro works flat out, everything so close by that he barely has to twist his torso, just reach out with an arm now and then to grab the ingredients and prepare the dishes. On the lunch menu, he offers a starter at six euros, entrées for between ten and twelve, a dessert for eight or nine. In the evenings, the restaurant serves crostini made with ingredients left over from lunch, which make delicate, original appetizers combining bell peppers and anchovies, pear and Roquefort, Brocciu and smoked tuna. Jacques, working the room, has found a platform for his cordiality, for the inexhaustible interest he takes in other people; as jovial as Mauro is silent, as attentive to his fellow diners as Mauro is to titillating their taste buds in the secrecy of his little kitchen, they make a unique duo who occasionally help out the resourceful, multilingual waitress—a friend who needs some extra cash. At La Belle Saison, it is always la belle saison—so Jacques announces to anyone who asks for details about the dishes when they order them.