What’s Cooking?

Der abenteuerlustige Gastronom Guillaume Glipa hat kürzlich eines der angesagtesten Lokale Londons eröffnet. Von LORRAINE MALLINDER

Guillaume Glipa’s oysters Rockefeller “deconstructed”

Guillaume Glipa has a special kind of alchemy. In fact, he has bucketloads of it. And it has made him a star of London’s food scene.

Glipa has brought that alchemy to places such as the popular Chiltern Firehouse restaurant in central London, but how would he describe his style?

“Professionally speaking?” he asks in an accent that still sounds very French even after 25 years in exile.

Glipa says he was inspired by his mentor, the legendary Lucien, whose bistro of the same name in New York serves classic French cuisine. “Lucien was an entertainer. He could transport you for an evening,” says Glipa. “He knew where to sit people, how to introduce people.”

Lucien taught Glipa that there was a lot more to the restaurant business than food. “There are places you go, have a great dinner, leave. Then there are places filled with the magic of the decor and the owner,” he says. “It’s about playing with life and space.”

Glipa is an army child, whose childhood travels with his family took him from his native Bordeaux to Niger and

French Polynesia. His culinary roots, however, come from home, chez les grandparents in La Gironde, in southwest France.

His grandparents grew their own fruit and vegetables, fished from the river and hunted in the forest. Grandpapa collected snails, prepared them à la bordelaise with tomato sauce and sausage meat. It was, says his grandson, “the cuisine of musketeers”.

Glipa began his culinary career in Paris, went to work in the US, where he trained as a sommelier, then moved to London.

His latest restaurant project is in London’s Covent Garden district. Named Louie, after jazz musician Louis Armstrong and “Sun King” Louis XIV, it is a very personal project, the culmination of 25 years’ experience. Glipa has brought Mississippi-born chef Slade Rushing to Louie to serve dishes such as New Orleans-style BBQ lobster and “deconstructed” oysters Rockefeller.

The decor at Louie has a timeless, tropical elegance, a bar on every floor, all the way up to the “secret cabana” at the top — a stylish post-lockdown invitation Glipa-style.