After the symbolic setting of La Maison du Comté, in Poligny, it is at the Grande Saline, in Salins-les-Bains, that the second stage of the “Times of the County” has just taken place, a gastronomic event launched by the professionals in the sector (breeders, cheese makers, refiners, etc.). A huge table unrolled its curves in the so-called “stove” room. A place that owes nothing to chance: “It is one of the places where salt is extracted, which is used in the manufacture of cheese, and where water was evaporated to harvest it”, explains Emmanuel Perrodin, nomadic chef and coordinator of the seven meals, spread over the whole of 2023.
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The sequel after the ad
On either side of the furniture created for the occasion, 150 guests are invited to celebrate the county around an exceptional lunch concocted by a duo of chefs. At the Grande Saline, it was Chloé Charles (Lago, Paris) and the starred Joël Cesari (La Chaumière, Dole, Jura) who officiated. Each dish was an opportunity to enhance Franche-Comté cheese and the diversity of its flavors depending on the region through a very original set of textures. “From each age of the county, we can do different things. The very old one, I grated it and used as a salt. The youngest, I made a rather liquid soup, like a minestrone”, says Chloe Charles.
Lunch among the cows or in a spruce forest
Five other meals will follow, still in the territory of the first protected designation of origin, which produces no less than 64,500 tons each year. And for each of these occasions, a Franche-Comté chef will welcome a chef from another horizon, for a high-flying encounter.
Each episode will have a different – and iconic – setting. We can thus have lunch in a forest of spruces, since it is the wood that accompanies the Comté during its refining; or in the middle of the cows, within the farm of a milk producer; or at the very heart of cheese making, in a cheese dairy, the place where milk is pooled. The icing on the wheel: the meal is free… Provided you are lucky enough to be drawn.
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Three chefs on the menu
- Vivien Durand
Around a farm and closer to dairy cows, the restaurant’s starred chef The Black Princein Lormont, in Bordeaux, will be at the helm with chef Hugues Droz, of the restaurant Le France, in Villers-le-Lac. - Sarah Chougnet-Strudel
In a pine forest, the young chef of the restaurant Regain in Marseille (past at L’Astrance, with Anne-Sophie Pic and Hélène Darroze), will cook with four hands with Jacques Barnachon, from the restaurant L’Etang du Moulin, in Bonnétale. - Romain Meder
In a cheese dairy, as close as possible to the vats, the starred chef of the restaurant Les Chemins, Primard Estatein the Eure, will be in the kitchen with Julien Thomasson, chef of La Table de La Mainaz, a star, in Gex.
