Olympe Versini
Olympe on high
By Laurent Feneau

The first lady chef to achieve star status some thirty years ago, Olympe Versini has now turned her back on honours so that she can better enjoy seeing her guests smile. After the glory years come the happy years.

Olympe Versini was the youngest lady chef during the 70s. Very soon "starred" - in 1980 - and just as quickly taken up by the media, one day, she decided to stop it all. "I left my restaurant in the 15th district of Paris in 1988 because I wanted to experiment with other things. I had had enough of partners and of banks on my back … So what I did, in a way, was to opt for tranquillity", she confided. And that is where the story of the new Olympe began. A lovely story which is first and foremost that of an unexpected and improbable meeting between a gastronomy "godmother" looking for a new home for her ovens and a venue charged with magic and history. In 1993, having acted as a cooking consultant for three years, Olympe Versini heard of a place going at 48, rue Saint-Georges. What a famous address. It was here that, for half a century and up to the age of 84, the no less famous Maria Miguel served her "renowned" five franc meals. "Somebody had told me the story of the Casa Miguel and of this incredible woman who, having fled Franco's Spain, opened her restaurant in the 9th district. I wanted to see the place. I peeped through the window. It was incredible, those little bistro tables, the flowered tablecloths, the Duralex drinking glasses… I immediately fell in love with the place and this made it possible to finally burn the bridges that linked me to 'haute gastronomie' ", she recalls.

Influences from the South
And yet, Olympe Versini's cuisine still owes something to that 'haute gastronomie' even if, nowadays, in fact, it rather tends to bear the stamp of its author's natural generosity. The dishes on the menu of the "Casa Olympe" have in fact been derived from her travels, from the tastes and flavours of the South and are still closely related to the cuisine of the South of France. "My mother used to run an inn in the South of France and I loved hanging around there as a child. So I don't use a lot of cream and cider but more naturally to prefer olive oil …", explained the owner of the restaurant. From a pumpkin cream soup garnished with foie gras through the renowned crunchy black pudding served on a bed of mixed green salad to crayfish ravioli, the chef admits to coming from a line that prefers accentuating the product itself, sometimes through very simple dishes and confided that she "she felt particularly at home when improvising". And then she added "the most important thing of all is to be able to work with good produce. Whether we're talking of meat or fish, above all, its quality must inspire me". So Olympe Versini is very modestly telling us that she uses what is available at the time for her dishes. She goes to Rungis once a week for offal, poultry, fruit and vegetables. She likes to use them as the basis for her ideas and to discover seasonal produce.
This woman of character, a native of Corsica, protests that her cooking is not "feminine". According to her, the same dish will be prepared in the same way whether it is cooked by a man or by a woman. "The difference between the sexes in the kitchen is meaningless and as proof, I know that some lady chefs often have men as their second in command", she states with no little annoyance. A well-entrenched position that does not prevent her from ardently supporting this new generation of lady chefs led by Hélène Darroze and Anne-Sophie Pic: "This is an entirely new phenomenon; when I started out, I was surrounded by people who were much older than me like Mère Brazier, for instance. In Italy, there are already four 3-star lady chefs. We are lagging little behind them but the talent displayed by Hélène Darroze and Anne-Sophie Pic , now acknowledged as being "starred", should ensure that lady chefs achieve greater recognition".

And beyond the stars…
Olympe Versini has never chased stars. "I won my first star without looking for it and that never affected my cooking. However, I still respect the institution because some chefs need this system to extend themselves. The most important thing for me is customer satisfaction", she stated. A client with whom this timid and reserved lady chef admits that she does not find making contact easy. "From a relational view point, I am not at ease in the restaurant and that is perhaps why I am a chef who prefers being in the kitchen", she jokes. Despite that, restaurant service sometimes brings pleasant surprises … Like in 1981, when the new, recently starred chef, emerged from her kitchen and found herself face-to face with … Orson Welles. "He came into the restaurant on his own for a meal and when I saw him come in, it was just as if, all of a sudden, the entire cinema history had come into my restaurant at that moment", recalls this woman who is smitten by cooking but also of the seventh art. Because Olympe Versini lives a very full life when she is not at her ovens. Reading is one of her favourite pastimes. She avidly devours biographies, essays and classical novels, "but never cookery books …", she hastily adds. This lady chef willingly exchanges the whisk and the saucepan for a paintbrush and a canvas, a hobby she has inherited from her mother whose works tastefully decorate the charming "Casa Olympe". And as for the future, the new Olympe's projects couldn't be simpler: "carrying on taking advantage of this rediscovered freedom to paint and travel because, when I am not in the restaurant, I can rely on an excellent second in command". His forename? Miguel…

Chinese portraits
"if you were… "
- A quality: honesty
- A fault: greediness
- An animal : the snake
- A country: Corsica
- A piece of music: an opera by Verdi or by Puccini
- A film : " Gone with the wind "
- A book: "The three musketeers "
- A famous man: Francis the 1st
- A dish: pasta
- A wine: an Arbois wine

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