Olivier Roellinger
Ocean trading chef
By Laurent Feneau

Olivier Roellinger is a great travelling chef, or is it the other way around? In Cancale, between a long trip to the end of the world, and a sea voyage aboard an old ship, this chef from Saint Malo celebrates his sea journeys with the exotic note of spices from all five continents.

Happy are those, who, like Olivier Roellinger have made a long trip … and this Breton chef makes at least three a year, if possible very far, with his female companion Jane. After India and Brazil, the man who certain have nicknamed the "privateer chef" has just returned from Patagonia, this small piece of land of ice and fire in the southern end of Argentina. A fervent admirer of great navigators who have marked Brittany history, Captain Roellinger took advantage of this by confronting the Cape Horn… This is hardly surprising being that this chef was born and raised in Cancale, in the very same house where he commands the helm in his three-star restaurant, Maisons de Bricourt. Saint Malo has forever been the birthplace of legendary travellers. From Duguay Trouin, Jacques Cartier and Surcouf, the men of this Earth have always had their eyes riveted towards the open sea. "These great adventurers have travelled around the world fifteen times, as, in Brittany, success is synonymous with leaving. Here, a young person who never leaves is always considered suspicious ", confides Olivier Roellinger. He adds, " This is why I am constantly moving and always travelling. I was born in a region and a house of travellers, so here, it is inconceivable to live a life without the ocean involved." And evidently, cooking is a wonderful venture for him, if not even a certain way of letting go of the ropes …

Cooking, like an ode to life
But this beautiful adventure nearly finished before it even began. Olivier Roellinger was indeed introduced to cooking in a very strange way. One evening in 1976, he was savagely attacked by five youths armed with iron bars, and he was left for dead on the ramparts of Saint Malo. After several weeks in a coma, this young man who thought he was destined for a career as a chemical engineer, learned he would be spending two years in a wheelchair. He recounts " I felt like a boat at anchor and these years of immobilisation distanced me definitely away from the sciences, and any Cartesian reasoning, to finally reveal the emotional and imaginary side of me". Olivier Roellinger was then 21 and made a promise to never enter into the adult world. " At the end of this dark period, cooking seemed like the ideal means to start living again, to delve back into childhood happiness, and, above all to express this incredible happiness to be alive".
This long recovery was also a time for this future chef to discover how much he felt attached to this family home, this magnificent old Saint Malo house where Surcouf had spent a part of his childhood. With a CAP (vocational training certificate) and having work experience from the restaurants Guy Savoy and Gérard Vié, he decided to open, in 1982, a simple table d'hôte with his wife in this great building overlooking the Bay of Saint Malo. What follows next in this adventure is well known to all. A first star in 1984, a second in 1988 and the ultimate achievement in June, 2006 when the Michelin Guide makes it their sole star for the year.

On the spice route
Olivier Roellinger's cooking obviously tells the complex story of its author but also of his region. " My cooking is both personal and intimate, and at the same time is deeply linked to Saint Malo's history, this period of "enlightened chefs". Indeed the end of the 17th century is fascinating as it is then the chefs acquired this basic form of intelligence which is curiosity. They became curious of the new products coming from the Americas but also from all the other countries being discovered at the time." explains the most highly decorated chef of Brittany. So all the trips made by this privateer chef logically follow along this spice route which was travelled through three centuries ago by the great navigators. Much like the chefs of the 17th century who resolutely waited for the products and spices from the New Continent, the owner of the Maisons de Bricourt is constantly in search of new flavours. Cloves from the Moluc Islands, achiote seeds from Thailand, or, Tellicherry pepper from Indian, Olivier Roellinger has already brought back more than 120 different spices from his treasure hunts. He dries them, roasts them, grinds them, blends them … so many possibilities for this Breton alchemist to try. Although he defends cross-cultural cooking, spices are not his goal, but simply a means. His work does indeed rest upon subtle alliances between iodised flavours and spicy fragrances. "In my kitchen, spices are used like punctuation marks when eating seafood products. For example, it's the case of the Malabar black pepper which I really use like a full-stop ", he explains.

This Breton chef does not agree with the idea of working by trial and error, and, instead has adopted a procedure which is, to say the least, original, if not vivid. Before even cooking and testing a new recipe, this ocean trading chef prefers to put his ideas into words, to name the dish and above all, to draw it… " Since I dislike hesitating and being wrong, I have an immediate need to link all my words, then to imagine the recipe like a painting whose lines and colours tell the story of a voyage or a dream, if it isn't both", he explains. The result is a kitchen where no one hesitates and where everything functions like on a ship. Each person to their post with only one master on board after God: the Captain Roellinger. He is at his best when behind the stoves, busy tasting and talking about his cooking. Here one can see he is just a man who is expressing everything he is and more, everything he loves, through his culinary creations.

Voyage around a plate
Small ravioles with seaweed and sesame, winkle in parsley juice and little curried cockle, are the entrées proposed by Oliver Roellinger which are like a voyage in itself… An evasion towards the shores of five continents which is followed by a dory marinated in a hazelnut-duo oil and Celtic mustard. This crossing then docks in an Asian port of call with some scampi and clams prepared in their own Tonkin broth. There is just time to find a small lobster with Xeres wine and cocoa in your plate. And then, setting sail again with an emulsion flavoured with vanilla …. From Madagascar of course!

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