Dish of the day

Last summer the wit-free zone that is daytime television burst into beyond-the-ironing life with Channel 4's Light Lunch where every weekday two wacky females, Sue and Mel, hosted lunch for a visiting celeb. Top London chef Jean-Christophe Novelli became a regular - the onscreen salivating was less to do with the culinary fantasies on offer, than the romantic fantasies being enjoyed by the plainer of the two presenters. As the straight man for the running gag he was perfect casting: archetypal French heart-throb in the Alain Delon/David Ginola mould, curly black hair, Labrador eyes, accent to melt a sorbet straight from the freezer. Yet what was so endearing was that throughout the barrage of innuendo and direct onslaught as he chopped, mixed and stirred, the dish of the day remained enchantingly embarrassed, as if the whole thing was for real.

Could any serious chef be that charming, that modest or that gorgeous? In the interests of high-minded journalism, we decided to find out with the publication of his sumptuous first cookery book, Your Place Or Mine (subtitled Cooking At Home With Restaurant Style, in case you got the wrong idea) as my excuse.

"Allo. I am Jean-Christophe. Sorry to have kept you waiting. May I offer you a glass of champagne?" Charm rating already off the Richter scale, we move to a private dining room behind his paintbox-bright brasserie (turquoise, purple and yellow with waiters to match) called Novelli EC1. Both EC1 and Maison Novelli, the original restaurant next door, are in the City of London, not an area known for its culinary riches. Yet last year, within a year of opening, Maison Novelli had won a Michelin star. It wasn't his first; that was six years ago in a rural backwater on the south coast of England, though he warns me not to take much notice of Michelin stars. "It's not if you have big ears that you can hear better." This somewhat gnomic expression - like much of what he says - I take to be a direct translation of the French.

Novelli never learned English in any traditional way; he left school too young - at 15. But he always loved the idea of England, always felt he would end up there, although he imagined it would be on a football pitch rather than as ruler of a restaurant empire. Because that's what he wanted to be: a professional footballer, which explains the muscles, the sheer coiled-spring power of the man.

As a boy he played for his home town of Arras ("the most boring and the coldest spot in France"); as a teenager he tried to be taken on as a stagere for the high-profile Lens, a few miles to the north. It was not to be, so he moved to Paris, still hopeful of finding an apprenticeship somewhere. Cooking was just a way of earning his keep. "When I realised that I was not going to be a Ronaldo or Ginola, I was lost. But I loved food. I was inspired by my mother who was a great cook. I used to lick the saucepans."

A succession of bistros and brasseries followed. It was not a happy time. "I was just watching the clock. It was sometimes violent. But it was not inspiration coming out. Just insecure egos and fears." Then, at 18, he got job at a Paris hotel owned by the Rothschilds. But he was soon "picked" for the Rothschilds' personal household. "It was a huge place, but I was just a commis doing the washing up, doing the peeling, roast potatoes for the kids, boiled eggs, omelettes. Basically it was cooking for a family with three kids, like my mother cooked. Sometimes there were receptions - people like the Queen, Giscard d'Estaing - so we had to make nice terrines, foie gras, things like that, sure. But then I learned very quickly, because of those nice ingredients.

"I learned the technique to produce better, more visual but in an easy way. Learning how to combine things. Like I remember my first sole terrine with cepes. I never saw a fish terrine in my life, I had never seen truffle in my life."

At home in Arras the fare had been - from a French perspective - limited. "My mother used to cook mussels and artichauts and pancakes. I didn't like mussels and I didn't like artichauts. She said, `this is the dish of the poor and you should be proud of it'. And I said why? We're not poor. `Because the more you eat the more you have on your plate'." Then there was his paternal grandmother across town. "She was French but she was married to an Italian man and so she was making a lot of pasta. And I always remember the kitchen was flying with flour. She had so much passion.

She was clean but chaotic. Every time I saw her with the flour I knew it was going to be nice although I could smell nothing because it was raw. That's how I had the understanding of the work you have to go through to get something you like."

It was only when the Rothschilds' main chef had a motorcycle accident that Novelli was given real responsibility, via the shopping car. Every morning found him in the Rue des Bellesfeuilles in the smart 8th arrondisement.

"It was amazing. Every shop supplied ministers or top celebrities in Paris. You used to meet all the chefs around 8 o'clock having coffee there. Chefs of Giscard d'Estaing, Brigitte Bardot. And there were incognito journalists there. You didn't need a newspaper. I was always interesting for them because with the Rothschilds there was always somebody famous coming. There was a lot of talk about relationships, who was having a mistress." But it was here, he says, that he really began to learn his trade. "If you know how to buy your ingredients," he explains, "It's 50 per cent of the result. The problem is not to destroy. Those people knew what they wanted. And I watched them."

Like he used to watch his mother. "My mother is handicapped, she has polio, so I used to go with her to the market, and because she went very slowly you could actually see everything around, then you go to another stall, and then you do it again and again, and you remember that stall because of the flavour."

But for all his apparent naivete and innocence, Novelli has extraordinary self-confidence. After only two successful years at London's Four Seasons Hotel (and yes, another Michelin star) he decided to go it alone without a backer of any description. Now less than three years later he has six restaurants, four in London, one in Normandy and another in South Africa.

Where does that confidence come from? "I don't know. I'm mad. It's all or nothing. And I have regrets, because the problem is I didn't appreciate what I had." What he had was a marriage and a daughter, who, because she lives in Hampshire with her mother, he sees only rarely. She is now 12 and he is terrified that she does not know just how much he loves her.

His first job in England was at Chewton Glen, a country house hotel in Hampshire. "I was very comfortable with the Rothschilds but then Mitterand, the socialist, took over, and everyone with money had to escape being hammered. I didn't understand. But very quickly they decided to go to America, they asked me to follow them but I decided no. Because by this time Novelli was far more than personal chef. He was also the trouble-shooter for the Rothschild network of restaurants from Switzerland to Corsica. "I was James Bond. 007." Much laughter. Licensed to cook. More laughter. He was only 22.

FROM Chewton Glen he hopscotched his way across England (including a spell running a restaurant for Keith Floyd in Totnes in Devon), winning Face Of The Future and Restaurant Of The Year Awards (twice). Then it was back to Hampshire. "For me to remain in my position I had to make a good profit. And then I discovered offals and pigs trotters. It was first a way of not spending too much money and getting more of yourself on the plate. And then you realise that it's very interesting, and then you realise that it was becoming unique.

And I knew because I was lost in Hampshire, if I was capable of turning it as a speciality I had more chance of being picked." By critics that is. "Also everybody at that time wanted to simplify French cooking in a new way. And I actually found a perspective to become more classic but again with originality, using my five senses. And I got picked very quickly. It was like the vultures coming. And then all of a sudden they put me on the top of the list. I didn't even realise that nobody was cooking that way."

Cooking, he believes, is the only human activity that uses the five senses apart from making love. What makes Novelli so different is that for him the starting point of any dish is, literally, visual. He starts off by doing a drawing, then filling it in with colour. "The vision is the most important thing for me, because if you are a chef you should know how to understand flavours."

And indeed, Novelli's dishes - simply to look at - are works of art. His friend Marco-Pierre White describes him as painterly. "He's a very honest person," he writes in the foreword to Your Place Or Mine. "What you see with Jean is what you get - but he is also very complex, and his honesty and complexity are reflected in his food." Novelli's obsession with step-by-step simplicity and visual impact are mirrored in the photography, by fellow Frenchman, Jean Cazals.

His building-block approach makes improbable dishes seem suddenly possible. It's the way he cooks himself. Starting with a trusted recipe he then opens up his "box of tricks".

Novelli acknowledges that in doing so much, becoming a chef-entrepreneur rather then just a chef, he is in danger of losing something. So why doesn't he slow down? His brow furrows. "When it's your money on the table, you become insecure. Even if you do well, you are always insecure. Especially for me. You are always scared to end up where you come from. Anytime it could be `Right. Dream is over. Game over'." And he whistles.

Jean-Christophe Novelli will sign copies of Your Place or Mine (Qua- drille, £25 hardback in UK) at Hodges Figgis, Dawson Street, Dublin, tomorrow at 4 p.m. and at Waterstone's, Dawson Street at 4.30 p.m.