I hear a rumor that he’s a butcher’s boy in Vanves, apprenticed to a man who is proud of his art; that he’s learning to bone carcasses, to carve meat correctly, to prepare the different cuts; that he’s learning to gut and clean poultry, rushing all day long between the cold room and the store, accompanying his boss to Rungis some nights—standing at the bar with the other butchers at five in the morning, drinking coffee and eating pork rinds on toast—and that he is learning the names and uses of the different blades with the seriousness of a Japanese samurai.

I locate him a few months later, working as a line cook in a three-star restaurant in the seventh arrondissement, hired by a big star chef. Under pressure, adrenaline pumping, he finds the experience interesting. He cooks vegetables grown especially for the restaurant in kitchen gardens in Sarthe or Eure, but he is definitely not a fan of the tension that reigns in the kitchen, nor of the fifteen hundred euros per month that he earns for his seventy-hour weeks. He lasts six weeks and then splits.

The following year, Mauro works regularly as the assistant chef in La Comète, a fashionable restaurant near the Paris Bourse. This time, he stays longer. The place is a rising star in the world of fooding: the chef is young and media friendly, and he worked in a famous restaurant after graduating from culinary school; the cuisine is in vogue, with its Scandinavian influences and its ingredients sourced from handpicked small organic producers. Seventy covers, twice a day. The concept of La Comète inverts the classic restaurant model: there is no fixed menu, and the dishes are directly inspired by the available ingredients: the three-course lunch menu is 45 euros; the six-course carte blanche menu is 75 euros; the same six-course menu is available in the evenings for 140 euros, with wine included. The interior architecture is open plan, with no separation between the kitchen and the dining room: a way of making the invisible visible—turning the cooks’ work into choreography, a theatrical performance. A way of sharing what they do. The atmosphere is relaxed, a pared-down elegance composed of neutral colors and high-quality materials.