MARIE ROBERT – Will-o’-the-wisp in the kitchen

The childhood of know-how

Surprising as it may seem, Marie Robert always knew she’d become a chef and one day run her own restaurant. Raised in the Lausanne area by a mother working in events management and an accountant father, at an age when others were playing with dolls, her favorite activity was baking cakes. I knew I wanted to do this job when I uttered my first words,” she says. And the idea never left me. Much later, when I was an apprentice at Bleu Lézard in Lausanne, I told the fish delivery man that we’d continue working together the day I had my own restaurant.” Dubious and amused, the famous deliveryman could not have imagined that the young girl would open Café Suisse in the year she turned 21, and that he would then become her official fish supplier.

Like a great

Among the people who taught her her trade, Marie Robert readily cites chef Olivier Gerber, with whom she spent two years in the kitchens of Lausanne’s Café Beau-Rivage. “But in reality, when you set up a restaurant at such a young age, you’re on your own. Alone in the kitchen, no doubt. As for the rest, Marie has been very well looked after right from the start. “My parents were extremely supportive, and it was my mother who found Le Café Suisse. And of course there’s my partner, Arnaud Gorse. When they opened Café Suisse nine years ago, there were two of them. She in the kitchen, he in the dining room. Today, there are ten. “A chef can’t do anything without an efficient brigade!”

A dish, a meal, a preference

Fish, meat, vegetables of all kinds, desserts… Marie loves it all. Passionately and without limits. “I don’t have any preferences,” asserts Marie, who revisits atriaux and fish tartars, citrus méli mélo, foie gras and pigeon supremes with relish. She does, however, have a weakness for chocolate and desserts, which she also prepares herself.

A funny girl

In Marie Robert’s kitchen, everything is good and everything is beautiful. You can’t have one without the other,” stresses the young chef. For my recipes, I always start with taste, then work on colors and presentation. I think there’s also a certain feminine side to my dishes. The result is a menu that’s playful, graphic and full of surprises. An exotic fruit bonzaï for dessert, smoke, pops of color and acidity, beds of foam… Under Marie Robert’s baton, gastronomy is transformed into a show. I’m very spontaneous, but I mature each recipe over time and according to my desires,” she explains. I test little things all year round before finalizing my new dishes. But only when I feel like it, not because I’m on a schedule.

Temperament

Marie Robert in the kitchen? “I can be tough, I’m uncompromising on quality, but I’m always fair! Resilient to the pressure, to the two daily marathons that make being a chef a relentless challenge, Marie Robert acknowledges that she works in a stressful, difficult profession. “Catering is a world unlike any other. But it’s also a world of passion. It’s a vocation transformed into know-how, to be discovered and savoured in her Bex restaurant, from which she has “no intention of moving” for the time being.