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At the age of 16, Fabien Lefebvre enrolled in cooking school. Today, he is considered one of the best chefs in France, and was named one of the country’s top craftsmen by the French Ministry of Labor in 2004.

This culinary artist will be showcasing his work at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel’s Lyon Restaurant from today until Saturday. At a media luncheon held in Jakarta earlier this week, Lefebvre treated guests to a preview of his artistically arranged dishes, consisting of colorful vegetables, fruit, fresh fish and beef.

After a decade of working in Michelin-starred restaurants, Lefebvre opened his own venue, Octopus, in 2005 in the heart of Beziers, a town in southern France located about 10 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea. Influenced by its location, Octopus specializes in French cuisine, refined with Mediterranean flavors. Three years after it opened, Octopus earned its first star from the influential Michelin guide.

Lefebvre uses mainly seafood, vegetables and fruit in his creations. The vegetables are always cooked last to achieve maximum freshness when served.

“We work under a lot of pressure because guests don’t want to wait too long to have their food delivered to the table, but at the same time, we want them to have a perfect meal,” Lefebvre said.

Using a lot of vegetables, he said, is a growing trend in modern French cuisine. Fruits and vegetables rich in fiber help to neutralize heavier ingredients like meat, he added.

“I have a lot of chef friends who also use a lot of fruits and vegetables in their creations to make them taste light and fresh,” he said.

In his own cooking, Lefebvre employs the principles of molecular gastronomy, a discipline that combines the art of cooking with the science of food chemistry to enhance methods of food preparation and presentation.

Presentation also plays an important role in Lefebvre’s cooking. The chef takes great pains to ensure that all of his ingredients are carefully crafted and arranged, making the dining experience as pleasing to the eye as it is to the taste buds.

He said that he believed in investing more heavily in high-quality ingredients at his restaurant than in decorations and tableware.

“I would rather put a beautiful fish on a simple plate than a bad fish on fine porcelain,” said Lefebvre, whose grandfather was a fisherman. “Every chef in the world is concerned about earning a good reputation for themselves, but for me, the guests’ satisfaction is the most important thing.”

He said that although he considered his cooking style to be modern, he still made use of traditional French techniques in his kitchen.

“You can be modern but you shouldn’t forget the past,” he said.

Chef Fabien Lefebvre’s French Cuisine
July 7-9
Lyon Restaurant, Mandarin Oriental Hotel
Jl. M.H. Thamrin, Central Jakarta
Tel: 021 2993 8888
Two-course menu from Rp 580,000
Three-course menu from Rp 720,000
Six-course degustation menu from Rp 1.3 million