The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
French cuisine may be in his DNA
Christophe Santos opens Otoulouse with French traditional cuisine in Branford
BRANFORD — A beef bourguignon with tender chunks of braised short ribs laced with cremini mushrooms and sourdough croutons. New York strip grilled with Camembert cheese and russet potato French fries. A cauliflower risotto in a bed of shiitake oysters resting in a sauce of fresh herbs.
Not bad for someone who got his start in the restaurant industry peeling potatoes in a small hotel in the southern France town of Montauban not far from his hometown of Toulouse.
Then again, for Christophe Santos, who this week is opening Otoulouse (O-tuh-LOOZ or, at Toulouse) in the former site of Branford’s G Zen Restaurant, there is cooking and then there is everything else.
“He has a gift,” said his wife Rachelle Chaput, the front of house manager who’s creating the wine and spirit list, and who’s admittedly biased.
Of course, cooking, which at Otoulouse, will feature “the best of what is in season with the spirit of traditional French cuisine,” according to its website, is apparently in Santos’ DNA.
His maternal grandmother had a catering business until she was 85.
“I used to watch her going to the farm and she was buying the whole duck alive and taking care of it all the way,” said the affable 44-year-old at a front table overlooking Branford’s Main Street with the steeple of the Congregational Church.
Then there was his paternal grandmother.
“She loved to cook and had a lot of kids and she was always doing different dishes and a good amount of it, so that was almost like restaurant style,” he said.
From peeling potatoes, Santos went on to earn three diplomas in classical cooking. That served him well in the French Army, where he spent 14 months.
“I was the only one that was a chef so they put me in charge of the cooking in our department,” he said.
That meant he was charged with cooking anything from “something in a can to a beautiful ribeye,” he said. He also learned, he said, “to be respectful and also punctual, and everything you do you do it 100 percent.”
From the Army, he worked with a series of Michelin starred chefs. From one, he learned “how to work with a duck, all the way from butchering it, to doing the foie gras, to the confit,” he said.
At each stop, “I’m just trying to suck up all the knowledge that the chef has and then you go somewhere else and they tell you to forget about what you learned, the right technique is this one,” he recalled with a grin.
Then there was Bar et Boeuf, in Monaco, part of the global restaurant empire of famed French chef Alain Ducasse.
“I could have stayed in that group, and that would have been comfortable, but my dream was to work in America,” he said.
He landed at the highend New Haven brasserie Union League Cafe in 2004, working for three years with celebrated chef Jean-Pierre Vuillermet.
“Christophe was among the talented chefs I’ve had the pleasure of mentoring,” said Vuillermet in an email.
“It was a beautiful place,” Santos said.
Then came the opportunity to help open La Voile, a French brasserie on Newbury Street in Boston. By then, he had met Chaput, who’s from Burgundy.
“I saw how he was able to change specials several times a week when something was in season,” said Chaput, who was tasked with pairing wines with food at the restaurant. “And I saw how a certain dish would get along with a certain wine, and it became clear to me that we could do something magical.”
After a stint as chef de cuisine at Tapenade in San Diego, Santos reunited with Vuillermet as his chef de cuisine at Madison’s Bar Bouchee, a satellite of Union League Café.
“I loved it,” he said, of the tiny French bistro the New York Times rated as “don’t miss.”
“It was a small space” — the Times described the seating as ‘elbow-to-elbow’ — “and I had a really good team, and we had to be able to work together,” he said. “I learned to be more managerial, and make
everybody comfortable so they could be there 100 percent.”
“Christophe is such a talented chef and he just made it work,” said Emilie Penner, who served, bartended, and hostessed at Bar Bouchee for 11 years. The owner of the popular Pearl Wine Bar on Main Street, she called Otoulouse “a welcome addition to the downtown Branford restaurant scene.”
In the midst of Bar Bouchee’s high-flying success, adversity struck.
“The space was so tight and it was on two levels,” Santos said. His hip began to ache. Working became agony. The dream of opening his own place dimmed.
“At one point I thought it would never happen so I was about to give up and just work for a company and have all my weekends
off,” he said.
Hip surgery followed. “As soon as my hip was replaced, I decided to go back to work and everything went supergood,” he said. “I was like ‘yeah, let’s bring the dream from the backburner to the front burner.’”
In April, he left Bar Bouchee. Soon after, he learned the site occupied by G Zen was available.
“We loved it at first sight, the location, the fact that it was mostly equipped, and it has a lot of charm,” he said.
“Dream come true,” said Chaput. “We imagined it right away as a place you can come in and relax and be convivial, where you can talk and laugh and unwind with old friends or meet new ones.”
The menu is inspired by local and seasonal ingredients,
including organic produce, local seafood, meats, and artisanal cheeses. For the more adventurous, there will be frog legs and escargot. There’s also a carefully selected and reasonably priced wine list.
“We have a beautiful opportunity to make people happy, because good food and good wine doesn’t just feed your stomach, it feeds your heart, your soul,” Chaput said.
A soft opening will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 25. Otoulouse will be open through the grand opening on Friday, Oct. 28. For reservations, email otoulouse.branford@ gmail.com.