“Parents life”. In this section, a personality evokes the joys and setbacks of his daily life with children. Hélène Darroze, starry chef and jury of “Top Chef”, is also a mother who raises her two daughters adopted in Vietnam alone.
Interview by Elvire von Bardeleben
We don’t know many leaders who talk about their children. Which is not so surprising, because most do not see them very often. In the morning before school, sometimes at 4:30 p.m., when the time of snack coincides with that of the restaurant’s “cut”. Hélène Darroze is a chef who combines the stars (three at the Connaught in London, two at Marsan in Paris, one at the Villa La Coste en Provence) and the occupations, since she is also a member of the “Top Chef” jury.
Her busy daily life did not prevent her from raising her two daughters alone, Charlotte (15 years old) and Quoterie (13 years old), whom she adopted in Vietnam. Hélène Darroze has always spoken very openly about her children, the adoption process, the love she has for them. On his Instagram account, between two photos of dishes, it is not uncommon to see one of them asleep in the Eurostar or eating an ice cream in the Basque Country where the heads come. On the menu of his heart restaurant, Marsan, which bears the name of her hometown, Hélène Darroze even imagined a dish, “The return of Hanoi”, which evokes his trip to Vietnam in 2007 to meet his elder, again Baby.
The first time you felt mother?
In 2007, I was at home when the phone rang. It was the correspondent of the association in Vietnam where I had submitted an adoption file to tell me that it was good. She used a word that I hate, “attributed”: a child was “attributed to me”. She gave me a name, a date of birth, a weight, told me that the baby was healthy, and that’s it. But that was enough for me to feel mom immediately.
Have you ever cried in front of your children?
Yes, there were mournings. I cried all the tears of my body when my dad is dead [in 2021]. I also cried at the death of Johnny [Hallyday], who was like a family member; That day, quittery, who was also crying, had told me that it was the first time that she was crying “for real”. Otherwise, I often pour a tear in front of a moving film, like last weekend when we watched Kramer against Kramer (by Robert Benton, 1979) with the girls.
the worst thing you have said To your children?
“I’m going to sell you to the market.” I really said it like a joke, they hadn’t even made stupidity. But that had frozen them, they took me back right away: “Never say that.” I understood that it was really necessary to pay attention to the words I used.
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