For a time, it seemed as if almost every French chef’s résumé listed a stage at either Maxim’s (the Belle Époque monument on the rue Royale) or the Crillon, if not both… Under executive chefs Jean-Paul Bonin (1979-1987), André Signoret (1987-1988), and, above all, Christian Constant (1988-1996), the Crillon has trained a disproportionate number of Michelin-starred chefs, as well as a heartening multitude of chefs with more modest ambitions who have enriched the contemporary bistro population of Paris and beyond…

The roster of students who claim Christian Constant as a mentor – the “galaxie Constant”, as the group has been called – is remarkable. In Paris alone, his protégés include not only Fréchon but also Yves Camdeborde of La Régalade, Thierry Faucher of L’Os à Moelle, Thierry Breton of Chez Michel, Arnaud Pitrois of Le Clos des Gourmets, Didier Varnier of Au Camelor, Jean-François Rouquette of the one-star Cantine des Gourmets, and Alain Pégouret of the two-star Laurent.

Born in Mountauban, in the foie gras and truffle country north of Toulouse, Constant apprenticed locally, then cooked in Paris at the old-school Ledoyen and under Guy Legay at the Ritz hotel before taking the top spot at the Crillon. In 1996, he left to open his own place Le Violon d’Ingres (to which Michelin gives one star). Violon d’Ingres is the French term for hobby…

It is clear from the food that Constant serves in his cool, small, elongated dining room, with it’s details from Ingres in terra-cotta red on the walls, that this is no mere hobby for him. His mastery becomes immediately apparent with an amuse-gueole of thick, rich Jerusalem artichoke soup enhanced with tiny butter-fried croutons and melting cubes of foie gras, a dish at once rustic and opulent. Many of Constant’s students make a version of this soup today, but his is the best – the simplest but the surest and most undistractingly satisfying. His tarte aux champignons, a very thin wound of puff pastry topped with ordinary white mushrooms, thinly sliced and buttery, with traces of olives, anchovies, and parmigiano lending it a Mediterranean accent, is almost elemental in it’s flavors. A kind of Constant signature dish, representative of the way he inverts (sometimes literally) time-honored culinary ideas, is his “tatin” of caramelized boneless pigs’ feet, formed into an upside-down tart topped with silky purée of ratte potatoes. Sampling these and other typical Constant creations – from turbot roasted with chestnuts and truffled celeriac to foie gras pan-fried in a coating of gingerbread crumbs with quince preserves – I realize that, however fresh his ideas are, they are firmly grounded in rural French gastronomy. Constant’s cooking is elevated not by some promiscuous “creativity” that mixes every flavor under the sun but by his obvious understanding of classic raw materials and by the sure-handedness of his technique.
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