Dorothée Boissier on Designing Restaurants, Paris, and Creative Partnership

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. This is Mandy Woodruff-Santos from Brown Ambition. When you think about discovering small brands, what store pops into your mind? Well, it should be Walmart. Seriously, Walmart has thousands of small brands, and they're all in one place. Just go online or in-store, discover, and shop. It could not be easier. Every one of these brands has a real story and real people behind it. They're true American success stories. And you can find them all at Walmart. Discover thousands of small brands at walmart.com today. Getting to a great idea is hard in college.

0:39Nonsensical essays, cringe-inducing presentations, and seemingly unsolvable problem sets. But then, the first thought becomes a final thesis. Jumbled slides transform into a polished keynote. And that midterm assignment gets a lot less mid. Because the road to great ideas is littered with bad ones. You just have to keep going until something clicks. Great ideas start on Mac. Find out more on apple.com slash college. Ruthie's Table 4 is now a book. Paul McCartney, Michael Caine, Kamala Harris, David Beckham, Tina Fey, Elton John, and many more. It's full of stories, beautifully designed in a celebration of the way food connects us all.

1:21It's available now wherever you buy your books. You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair

1:34Every time I come to Paris I remember a beautiful time in my life In 1971 up to 1976 Richard, my husband, and I lived here while he and Renzo Piano were building the Pompidou Centre We were young and we worked together I as a graphic designer, he is an architect. Our lives and our work were completely intertwined. Dorothy Boissier understands that world. Together with her husband Patrick Gilles, she has spent the last 20 years creating exquisite buildings across the world. They are partners at home and partners at work. Today we're at Montclair's beautiful flagship store on the Champs Elysees, designed by Dorothée and Patrick.

2:26We will talk about Paris, we'll talk about partnership, and of course we will talk about food and really what it means to build something with someone you love. Thank you to be here. Thank you.

2:44You grew up with your mother and father in Paris? In Paris. In Paris. In Paris, my father was from Normandy. If we go to food... Yes, butter, creme fraiche. Voilà. I love this. I love this. I love when it's rich. I do too. I'm not supposed to because we cook Italian food. You know, whenever you have chefs around the table and we start talking about the food we love, French food and butter is a big thing. When you see the butter in the pan starting to... Yeah. The sound. Yeah. Exactly. So tell me about your father. He came from Normandy and came to Paris. Came from Normandy, came to Paris, so he was working a lot.

3:29Always working, working, working very hard. And I didn't see a lot my father. I was with my two sisters, my mother. Dinner was more the children... Oh, tell me about... Yeah, I'd love to know about a French... At that time, the children were more eating before the kitchen. And you had a cook? Yes. Did your mother cook? I think I never saw my mother cook. Good for her. Everybody always says to me, my mother cooked, she made amazing food, my grandmother cooked. And of course, I'm a cook and I express a lot of my love for my children through cooking. But I really do respect women who somehow just decided if they could, many can't, they were not going to cook.

4:21So that was your mother. Exactly. So she wasn't cooking. My grandmother wasn't cooking. And so you grew up in this life. You went to school in Paris. Went to school in Paris. Do you remember the food that the cook would make for you? Was it plastic French? A very traditional. Cervelle. Ah, Cervelle. Tell what Cervelle is. What is Cervelle? How do you say in English? Brains. Brains. Yeah, for children, that's good. At that time, you had to eat Cervelle à la vinaigrette and things like that. And did you mind that? I didn't really like it. You didn't like it? No. And would you go to Normandy? Sometimes.

5:01Yeah, and have the food? Do you remember the food from there? Food, especially cheese. Butter is incredible there. I know. You know, the big piece of butter and just take it. I love butter. I once told my mother-in-law for her first meal, she came to, she's Italian, and she came to dinner at our house, and I made a huge effort to make her a really good dinner to impress her. And when she left, she looked at me, she said, that was a very, very good dinner, Ruthie, but you know, anybody can cook with butter.

5:33Yeah, thanks. That's why you stuffed the butter? We went to the olive oil. Never my mom told me, don't eat this, don't eat that. Never. I wasn't obsessed by food. I could eat cakes, I could eat everything. So your father, you spent your childhood with your father until... My father until eight years old. Yes. And after my father died. And I grew up with my stepfather that I loved. And so do you know anything about their love story, how they met? I think my mother, they met in an airport and they talked to each other and I think something happened. But you know, he was the kind of man. My mother told me when they were going to restaurants, going back, she could find lots of message from women in his pockets.

6:28Oh, really? Just even leaving the restaurant? Yes. The women were putting... Did they have children, your mother? Never. No, because she met him, I think she was 38. They had like 20, 25 years of difference. Oh, I see. And he was a very handsome man. He had from his grandmother an incredible collection of art. What period? Impressionist. Impressionist. Wow. And his father was an antiquaire. So he had this passion about the decor and also the art. And he lost his mother very early. He grew up with his grandmother. She was an incredible woman. She was a friend of Bonnard, of all those artists of Ambroise Vollard, who was a very important collector at that time.

7:29So we are in the 1920s. And this man, Ambroise Vollard, had like 6 ,000 paintings of Picasso, Cezanne. He was the man to really help all those painters. It wasn't easy for them, like Gauguin. And he died quite early and he gave half of his collection to this woman, the grandmother of my stepfather. And she kept them and... She kept... At that time I heard that she didn't like them. They were like in the storage. And so she was also painted by Renoir, Bonnard, so even my stepfather, you can see the big paintings. She's like small, like five years old, and she's there with the mother, the grandmother.

8:18So it's really a thread of... Culture. Yes. I was loving, especially looking at all the books, the auction art books, and trying to know which one is which one. So art, antiques were always around me. I think it maybe educates a little bit my eye. And I thought I could do, I could study art. And this way I arrived in a school called Penningen. Where is it? In Paris? In Paris, Reu du Dragon, a small street in Saint-Germain. Oh, yeah. And for me it was a real discovery. What did you discover? What was it? I discovered drawing. I didn't know how to draw. I had around me only young people who were drawing since they were so little.

9:03They were all genius about that and I wasn't. So I had to, it was like a new language for me, starting from zero. So little by little I had to understand. But as I was used with my eye to look at art design, I was very curious. When you left home, you were still in Paris. Always in Paris. And you were in Paris. Yeah, I can feel that. Always in Paris. That attention to Paris. And then did you live at home still while you went to art school? Or did you have your own place? I was still living at home. And when I left the house, it was difficult for me. Tell me about it. Very difficult. I was in love with a man that I met at 17.

9:48Yeah. And he really, he wanted me to live with him. I accept after five years. It was difficult for me to leave the house. When you lived with your boyfriend in an apartment, did you become a bit more domestic? Yes, I did. Would you shop and cook? Yes, yes, I did. Did he as well? I think he was more looking for a woman who... You would do that for him. Yes.

10:17So, after that, I took a quite different... Type of man. Yes. And what would you do? Would you have parties? Yes, parties. You were 19, you were in Paris. Yes, but I was taking the book of Robuchon, trying to do the perfect purée de pommes de terre. Lots of butter. Lots of them. We always call Robuchon's potatoes, butter with potatoes. Exactly. I know that recipe very well. So I was trying to be the best housewife. Yes. And maybe not. And so Paris, and you went to art. What were the other students like in art school? Art school, you go a lot to museums. You work a lot, a lot, a lot at night, always.

11:11How did you segue from that to being a designer? You have to decide after two years what you want to do, graphic or interior design. So I took interior design. I think I love the idea of a scene, a theater, decor, lighting, people moving into a decor. I remember I was going a lot to Opéra Bastille. And I saw this opera, Madame Butterfly, by Bob Wilson. Oh, yes. And I had a shock because you can see, I mean, it's almost all the arts were concentrated on the scene, plus the music. Yeah. But I love this idea of creating a sort of movie in a way. doing design, interior design is that, because you really create the decor, you have the light, but you have the people inside.

12:10And did you go to the cinema a lot? Was cinema a big influence on you at the time? Yes. Because there were a lot of interesting films coming from... Especially Patrick, my husband. He was, he's really an artist. And when I met him, I was discovering a new world of art, of movies, of really, he was at Pompidou I think every week. Really? This was in what year? Every year were we in the 80s? Yes, more or less, 90s. He was coming from Marseille. He was born in Paris. He hated Paris. It was very difficult for him. So he was every weekend at Pompidou. How did you meet? We met after school at our first job, Christian Liegre, the interior designer.

13:00And he arrived with his long hair, the belt with the bull. And me, I was like the perfect Parisian. And was it love at first sight? Almost, yes. I remember he showed me his book on drawings and he was so talented. I was impressed. And I always thought I have to work one day with him. And after I joined him and we worked together. Did he love food? I think he loves food. Yeah, he does. From Marseille. He has a mother who is cooking incredibly well. She was born in Algeria. So she can cook everything. African, but super French and with nothing. Could you be with somebody, though, who didn't love to eat?

13:56Because you love to eat, don't you? I love to eat, but very little. I cannot eat a lot. Yeah, but that doesn't matter how much. Do you care about what you eat? It's what I told Patrick. He needs to eat the whole piece of chocolate. I told him, just eat one piece. You keep it in your mouth and that's it. Yeah, I think that's a battle you might never win. as an older woman telling your husband how to eat a bar of chocolate.

14:26This is Troy Millings from Earn Your Leisure. You probably think of Walmart as a store that carries about everything under the sun and maybe not as a place to discover small brands. Well, two things can be true at the same time because Walmart is home to thousands of small brands founded by people who had an idea, took a chance, and built something of their own. Behind everyone is a real story and a lot of hard work. So why not take a little time to recognize all the people building small brands across the country and support everything they're creating? Walmart is proud to give those brands a place on its shelves and online.

14:59It's never been easier to find and support small brands. So take a look at Walmart. You might come across something new, something unexpected, or a brand whose story speaks to you. You never know what you're missing until you look. Discover thousands of small brands at Walmart.com. What about when you're designing a restaurant? What we love is when we have the chef with us to really build the project. Do you feel that the chef is the client? It's so important. He really has his vision on how he sees the people into the room, the way he likes them to be seated, close, not close. Is the kitchen open?

15:43Do we want to see what he's doing? So it's very important. It's also a lot of body language. The way you sit, what also you touch, if you feel well, not well, how do you look, what is your view. And in a restaurant you are staying one hour and a half. It's not like in a shop where you move and you sit. And a very important time as well. You might be sitting at a place to talk to somebody very intimately or you might be having a meeting or you might be celebrating or you might be unhappy. So this and when we started doing restaurants, it was almost the first project we did was for the Hakkasan restaurants.

16:28Yes, yes. And Alan Yao was the... I know Alan. You know him? Very well, yeah. And I think he was the first one to understand that a restaurant was something much more than a restaurant. That it's really a moment where people do much more than just eating. And he explained us really how important it is when you enter, if the corridor is narrow, not narrow. How do you touch the people when you walk? What is the feeling of your table? You see all those details, the height of your seating. Yeah, I know. That's very important. It's very important. It started with the Harry's Bar in Venice. I was just going to say that.

17:12Exactly. I was just going to say that. I was just, it's funny, we had exactly the same thought. Because I, you know, you go into Harry's Bar in Venice, you wonder why is it so beautiful? It's in a room with an ugly ceiling. It's a room that has no windows. It has a room that has, you know, the walls don't look onto any view. And yet, it's one of the most beautiful places to sit. And my friend, you probably know him, André Bellage, will tell you that it's the height of the tabletop. And I mean, I always used to think that it also, I love the idea, rather like a bar, there's no entrance. You just go through those swinging doors and you're there.

17:51Do you have a favorite one that you've designed that you go back to? We did one two years ago for Anne-Sophie Peak, Baccarat. It's a Baccarat restaurant in Hong Kong. It was an interesting project because the space was very high level in a tower. So quite low ceiling, not a big place. So the space was not so interesting, but we had to create the show. And Sophie told us the kitchen has to be the center. So it's an open kitchen. Completely open. And it's easy to say that because we all say, oh, most of the time say that. But really doing it and when you are guests being a part of the kitchen is something different.

18:40Our kitchen in the River Cafe. Have you been to the River Cafe? No, never. Okay, well we have to plan. Tomorrow I think I'm taking a 10.30 train. Yes, I'm coming. I would really love you to come. Thank you, me too. You know, it's constantly in your mind how people are going to feel in your restaurant. Our restaurant is very open. It's very, in a way, I always call it very democratic, that it's just one large room. But that where people choose to sit, people come over and over again, know the kind of table they want or where they want to. And some people just walk in and say, you know, where should we go?

19:10And they don't care. My husband could never sit in a restaurant facing a wall. So we'd all pile into a restaurant, sit down, then he'd come in and we'd all have to get up and move. So the idea of the open kitchen became very popular and people often say to me, you know, where did you get the idea from an open kitchen? And of course, I look a lot towards California, Alice Walters and Wolfgang Puck did it. But it also became the way I think contemporary architects in the probably late 60s, 70s started seeing spaces inside as being communal that you didn't like your mother would have to go into another room and cook the meal and then she wouldn't see her children until the performance of dinner.

19:53Instead there were kitchens that were open, they were part of the living room. So if we're thinking about food and recipes and designing kitchens, we also cook sometimes, or we eat, or we buy food that will make us feel calmer or comfortable and in the end sustained by a feeling of happiness. And so if you needed to think about food in that way and you wanted comfort, is there a food that you would go for? Yes, a hot chocolate. Hot chocolate. But in an ice cup. Okay, what would the cup look like? Not too big. Almost like a teacup, but a little bit bigger. Quite thin, the porcelain. And I love when the chocolate is in the special pot also.

20:43What special pot? You know the chocolatierre. So it's a pot which has a wooden stick that you can move, steer instead. So the chocolate is not going to be solid. So I love also what is around it. What is around it? I mean a little bit of cream. You can add some smaller chocolate balls. you see, you can add things. And do you do this quite often when you need, is this what you would go for? Maybe I don't need a lot of comfort. Maybe you don't need comfort. I think you're just saying that so you can have your hot chocolate. Exactly. I think it's really good. I love hot chocolate. When we lived in Paris, we used to go to Angelina on the Rue Rivoli.

21:30And they had the chocolate that was so thick that you couldn't pour it from the... You literally would stand, do it like that. and it wouldn't come out. It's almost too... No, it wasn't too as delicious. Ah, it was good. Really? But you have to add a lot of cream. Yeah, then you add the creme fraiche. And I once saw it. We used to go there and Karl Lagerfeld would be there having his and all these characters. And the address of it, I know the address, it's called 226 Rue Rivoli. That's where the... And we used to say, we used to remember it by saying if you had too much, you'd be 226. So we always say, yeah, let's go to 226 Rue Rivoli.

22:07but I think the hot chocolate is a beautiful choice of comfort food. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

22:18Ruthie's Table 4 was produced by Robbie Hamilton, Zad Rogers and Ruthie Rogers. This has been an Atomize production for iHeart Media.

22:31This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? When you think about discovering small brands, what store pops into your mind? Well, it should be Walmart. Seriously. Walmart has thousands of small brands, and they're all in one place. Just go online or in-store, discover, and shop. It could not be easier. Every one of these brands has a real story and real people behind it. They're true American success stories, and you can find them all at Walmart. Discover thousands of small brands at walmart.com today. Apple Vacations, where your story starts. The Summer Savings Event is here at Apple Vacations.

23:12It's the perfect time to bring everyone together for the getaway you've been dreaming about. Book between July 24th and August 27th and enjoy up to 55 % instant savings. From relaxing beach days to unforgettable moments with the people who matter most, your next vacation starts here. Travel through July 31st, 2027. Start your vacation today at AppleVacations.com or through your travel advisor. Apple Vacations, where your story starts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.