Meat is trickier. You have to join forces with a butcher you trust, team up with a supplier. The first one Mauro starts to work with closes in August, so—lacking funds—he decides to go to the Beauvau market to talk to one of the last few artisan butchers in Paris, a butcher with a stall whose prime rib, rabbit rillettes, and game meat are renowned throughout the capital. The man doesn’t work with restaurants, as the quantities of meat they demand are too high—he refuses to put himself under a client’s thumb and immediately makes clear his desire for independence, his determination to work the way he likes. I don’t need you, you know, he seems to tell Mauro, who remains patient, going back to see him every day, getting to know him, hanging around the stall for a long time in the hope of an audience, a few words, a look of trust. It is like taming a wild animal. Mauro’s stubborn persistence bears fruit: at the end of the summer, the butcher agrees to supply meat to La Belle Saison, an important step that will have implications for the restaurant’s reputation. From this exchange, Mauro gains not only chuck steak that has been matured for seven weeks or fresh sides of veal, but a sort of symbolic anointing.

Lastly, there’s the wine. It’s difficult to come up with even a simple wine list when you have no culture of wine, that special knowledge that, it’s said, takes more than a lifetime to acquire. Thankfully, in the daily socializing that often forms the first network of relationships in a neighborhood, Mauro will meet two guardian angels: Michel, owner of the Envolée wine bar, whose menu offers a good selection, and Fabrice, a sommelier from Bristol who works there. Together, they organize blind tastings one Friday every month—They’re my education, Mauro says as he beckons me closer so I can see in daylight the color of a Loire wine that he is turning slowly in a glass. Fabrice helps him choose the wines for his cellar. For Mauro, this is the moment to acknowledge that he is half-Italian: the wines of La Belle Saison will be organic, by small producers from his mother’s homeland.