The humorist has hosted several cookbuks with an offbeat tone embellished with a hint of trash, such as “Pomptotte recipes” on Canal +. On stage with his first show, “Nomber”, it is today on the Twitch network that he expresses his passion for gastronomy.
by Camille Labro
Child, I was not interested in food at all. We ate very badly at home – in general frozen frozen. Sometimes my mother had creative desires that she did not master at all: she then prepared unlikely dishes, like a vegetarian pâté with apricots, it was weird and not terrible. We ate mainly to eat and, sometimes, on Saturday, we made a Pierrade.
Until the day when I was 16-17 years old, my parents took me dinner in a gourmet restaurant, a star inn in the west of France. I discovered what “eating well” means, and it turned my head. Especially for dessert: I ordered caramel profits that the server placed on the table. They were beautiful. And there comes a guy with a small saucepan and a sauce he comes to pour on it. It was the saus. My brain twisted. I said to myself: “There is a guy, his job, it’s making sauces”. And I who come from the geek middle and video games, where we are in the perfection of the smallest little nothing, I found it dingo.
teach geeks to eat
I discovered that gastronomy is also a geek thing. Suddenly, I wanted to do the hotel school. I was already called “octopus” from college, because I have always done lots of things – comics, video, song, theater – and, at the same time, I always seem very soft. Hence Poulpe (the “gentleman” came later). Finally, I did not get into the hotel and restaurant hotel, I became a freelance graphic designer, but I always had this desire to do something with food. I launched a program on Nolife, a cable channel dedicated to geeks playing video games, like manga culture and eat pizza in the microwave. It’s called “Eat my Geek”, to teach geeks to eat.
A few years later, I met Antoine de Caunes, I arrived in Canal and I made “the pomptotte recipes”, declined by a Quebec program, where we cook while drinking vodka shots . After two seasons, the CSA put on, necessarily. But what have we laughed and what have we drank! I always drink as much, but I became a vegetarian and I created a new program on the Twitch network (another geeks thing) which is called “Végésale”. To show that we can make vegan cooking with a snatch, a little trashy and too good. This is my thing, that.
It’s like Sazerac, my favorite cocktail – a drink that defines me. I love him with whiskey, when I don’t like whiskey. But the fact of “pimpting”, adding a few details, it makes it hyperlegant. This is something that Antoine de Caunes taught me: you have to cultivate his background by giving him the most beautiful form possible. My background is that I have always done a little craded, absurd, burlesque things, but by putting them in a beautiful setting, a chic container, it becomes stronger. My show may seem bizarre and cracra, but, between beautiful curtains, with a beautiful light, in a beautiful theater, it can become funny, deep, tasty. No?