Female fine dining

Women are a more permanent fixture in fine dining kitchens, says L’Ecriture’s chef de cuisine Heloise Fischbach

You recently organised a menu for International Women’s Day at the restaurant. What’s it like working in a male dominated industry?

It’s definitely an accomplishment to succeed in this profession where women are not necessarily the first pick in a kitchen regarding the key positions. With all the women who succeeded recently, like Vicky Lau and Helene Darroze, I think the profession is encouraging more women. We just need to keep heading in this direction more and more.

Tell us about the experience of taking over the restaurant for Women’s Day – what were you most proud of?

For Women’s Day, it was spontaneous: we had a lot of ideas running through our heads in terms of products, colours, flavours… the challenge was to create a menu with a structure from top to bottom that was rich, flavourful and attractive. That’s why I’m not proud of anything in particular, I was just happy to make something diners could really enjoy.

The lunch and dinner tasting menus were conceived, developed, and executed by the women of Écriture from front of house to the kitchen. Can you elaborate?

All the women in the restaurant did something they knew, depending on their level. It’s not only one menu, but also the entire atmosphere in the restaurant that we changed, just for one day.

While the two chef di partie, Tia Cheung and Alexia Kei, helped me realise the menu and produce the dishes, assistant manager Kristina Delaire and guest relations officer Ng Ka Yan took care of the decoration of the dining room, the menu and everything related to the front of house. It was a team project, and that was the most important aspect about it all.

Your executive chef, Maxime Gilbert, describes you as one of the most talented chefs he’s ever worked with. Why does your relationship work so well?

It’s about honesty, respect and freely sharing ideas. He’s not the type of chef who will ask me to execute his ideas – I’m free to create what I want. We talk a lot and share the same vision. All of this contributes to a good relationship between us.

Écriture uses a lot of Japanese ingredients. Was this something you were familiar with?

I wasn’t familiar with them in France as ingredients like bonito, uni and koji (fermented rice and/or soya beans) are not that common. It was certainly a learning curve but we use a lot of French produce in the restaurant, too, from Aveyron lamb to Brittany langoustines. It’s just about using the best produce.

You’ve worked at two three-Michelin starred kitchens, Mirazur and L’Arpege, in France. What were the standout moments there?

At Mirazur, it was taking care of the pastry. I was only a commis chef, and wanted to learn more about pastry work, but I didn’t expect that the pastry chef would quit two months after I joined Mirazur, and for the chef to put me in charge. Chef Mauro Colagreco challenged me and trusted me, and I learned a lot with the support of the entire team.

At L’Arpege, I was free to put forward anything I wanted, but I needed to make sure everything was perfect when chef Alain Passard came by to try the food – it was the perfect place to start a culinary career. These two moments were a big part of my career, but there’s a lot more to come from me yet.

How has your culinary approach changed since arriving in Hong Kong?

When I arrived in Hong Kong, I was chef de cuisine, so needed to give more than only execute [the ideas of others]. So here I started to set up my ideas and be more creative. Working with Maxime, my mind started to become more precise, to find something different and add in little details to make the difference [to a dish]. All the things I learned before stayed in my mind but became sharper.

You left Paris for Hong Kong in 2016. What do you like about being a chef in the city?

It never stops. The city is always full of people and activity. But there is no time to waste and you have to keep going day after day.

What do you miss most about France as a chef, and would you like to return one day?

I miss the terroir, the producers, and the contact between chefs and artisans. For me it’s one of the most important parts of our work, and in Hong Kong it’s really difficult to make that happen. I’m sure I will go back to France one day – I just don’t know when.

As social distancing measures begin to ease, how will you be tempting guests back to the restaurant?

We will continue to protect guests by keeping the restaurant safe. We’ll also be debuting new menus.

Tell us about those

We will introduce two new menus, one of which will be vegetarian, which is different to the one we have now. The spring and summer months are the perfect time to introduce this, as there is so much good produce around. Hopefully it will be well received, as I think people are more open to vegetarian menus now. ectriture.squarespace.com