Bernard Marchive - Chef of Pesce

Pesce chef misses the flavors of Europe

 

When Pesce’s French chef Bernard Marchive offered his recipe for this column, he said, “I selected a fish recipe very simple and very easy to realize. Just get the best ingredient on the market.”

The instruction forms the cornerstone of his food philosophy. Marchive’s commitment to quality can result in some scathing rebukes of the produce available in the United States — albeit in a very gentle tone of voice and lilting French accent. “Vegetables are terrible.” “In the supermarkets everything is beautiful but has no taste.” “Even very good quality fish have less flavor than in Europe.”

But he is not entirely negative. “The difference in food between Europe and here,” he says with enthusiasm, “is the meat is better here.” He is ecstatic about local stone crabs, for instance, which he finds much finer than Europe’s crab-family varieties.

A man who folds in on himself to talk, Marchive gives the sense that his enthusiasm is only barely contained in his compact frame. The Dupont bistro may be relaxed in style, but Marchive’s standards are not. He has found ways to get hold of the flavor he demands, going to small farmers for his fresh produce, with much of it coming from Le Bocage, a Virginia farm owned by “a crazy French guy, always complaining about water.” For soft-shell crab and oysters, “we support as much as we can the people on the [Chesapeake] Bay.”

Pesce has always rested its reputation on fine fish. Marchive, the restaurant’s first French chef since the place opened in 1993, comes, like its flamboyantFrench owner Regine Palladin, from a fine-food background. He was the pastry chef at Lespinasse, a now-defunct temple of food in the Carlton Hotel, and spent a year at Le Paradou as Yannick Cam’s sous chef. “I really enjoyed it. The guy is really talented; really, really good.”

He is just as warm in his admiration of his present boss. “She’s a fabulous person to work with. She takes care of her people,” he says, treating them as well as she does her equipment. “We still have the dishwasher we had for 14 years!” he said of the machine. His eyebrows shoot up in amazement.

Marchive joined her last year. He liked what she was doing, he says. For example, Pesce won’t use farm-raised fish. And in the pursuit of quality he will source it as far and wide as necessary. Halibut comes from Alaska and pompano from New Zealand. And every Thursday he gets a delivery of sardines and cuttlefish from Portugal.

“I’m always looking for products that are very different,” he says. “Now I am going to start maybe next month with langoustines straight from South Africa. I will try to develop a market. Langoustines are more European [than prawns]. The best come from Brittany.” His shoulders rise and his elbows fan out in a Gallic shrug of helplessness. “Everything else is different quality. But I will try.”

Marchive was born in Limoges in southwest France, and his mother and grandmother were both great cooks. He went to culinary school not to cook but to learn how to be a waiter. It’s a highly respected and discreet profession in France, not a bolt-hole for impoverished students and actors who introduce themselves to diners by name. “In France,” Marchive explains, “to be a waiter you have to learn cooking.” He became the owner of two restaurants, then met his American wife in Paris, married her and moved to Atlanta, where she worked.

There he opened Café la Glace, which won a Best in Atlanta award three years in a row. (It later became another restaurant.) “I introduced nouvelle cuisine to Atlanta,” he says with pride. Then they moved to Washington. “My wife wanted to be back with her parents.” So Marchive joined Lespinasse, moving, when it closed, to spend four years managing Marvelous Market shops.

He is warm in his admiration of his American clientele and their understanding of food.
“American people travel so much now. They have been in all the three-star restaurants in Europe. You need to say the truth to American people. There is no shortcut. They like so much to learn. Speaking about food is magic for them.” He is astonished by the number of cookbooks diners own — “many more than you will find in a library in France.”

Marchive manages to get back to his motherland to see his 80-year-old parents only once a year. He and his wife spend free time on their sailboat in Annapolis, on the Outer Banks or gardening. “Last year,” he beams, “I didn’t buy one tomato from June to October!”

Pesce (202-466-3474; http://www.pescebistro.com) is located at 2016 P St. NW. Main courses cost $27 to $30.

This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the NorthWest Current newspaper when Bernard Marchive was still chef at Pesce. Photo Bill Petros/The Current.