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Jean François Bruel, Executive Chef
Raised on a farm in a small village outside of Lyon, trained under French Master Chefs including Georges Blanc, Paul Haeberlin and Michel Guérard, named Chef at a noteworthy New York restaurant at age 28... if this sounds uncannily similar to the life of Chef Daniel Boulud the coincidence is greater than you think. This cook's journey is that of Daniel Boulud protégé, Jean François Bruel, Chef de Cuisine at the new DB Bistro Moderne, opened in Midtown Manhattan this past June 2001.
Like his mentor, Jean François has a talent for combining the best of French and American cooking. In dishes such as Nantucket Bay Scallops with Celery Purée, Mandarin Glaze and Grapefruit Jus he fuses the palate and traditional techniques he learned in France with the best of American ingredients and the open-minded approach and spectrum of tastes he has been cooking for in New York since coming to work for Daniel Boulud over five years ago.
The Bruel family farm was in the village of St Héand, near St Etienne in the heart of the Rhone Alps and in the area of the great culinary capital of Lyon. (The latter also happens to be Boulud's native region.) The food on Jean François' mother's table was harvested from the kitchen garden or raised on the family farm. The young chef's natural talent for cooking and great respect for food certainly began with preparing what was grown and tended in his own backyard.
As a child Jean François made simple sweets such as clafoutis and sablés alongside his mother. He fell in love with pastry making at a very young age and even worked briefly in a cousin's pastry shop. Jean Francois' mother continued to influence him in the kitchen ranging from the rustic cow and goat's milk cheese she made from the family dairy to the rabbits, chickens, pigs and goats she raised for family meals.
His first professional role model was Marc Lassablière, Chef at the local restaurant where he worked after school and on weekends from the age of fourteen. He fondly remembers the venison civet served in winter and the perfectly crisp frog's legs persillade on the menu each spring. Yet Chef Lassablière's most valuable lessons were the efficiency, speed and work ethic it took to run a kitchen smoothly, lessons which would eventually motivate Jean François to go on to cooking school.
Other significant mentors included Chef André Barcet under whom Jean François completed his first apprenticeship in St Etienne, and later Paul and Marc Haeberlin in Illhaeusern where the young cook was inspired as much by the renowned three Michelin starred restaurant's refined cooking as by the local Alsatian foods and wines. A later stint in the kitchen of culinary legend, Michel Guérard, imbued Jean François with an instinct to lighten dishes, substituting flavor for richness, in the spirit of Guérard's "minceur" style.
Jean François joined Daniel Boulud in New York in 1996 spending his first two years here as a "chef de partie" (line cook) at DANIEL. Beginning in the fall of 1998 he spent over three years as first Sous Chef at Café Boulud, Daniel Boulud’s three star French-American restaurant on the Upper East Side. In Jean François' own words, these years spent alongside one of the city’s most exacting chefs taught him to think more "à l'américaine" while still preserving his French roots. Bruel was named chef at the new DB BISTRO MODERNE, opened by Boulud in Midtown Manhattan in June 2001. The DB BISTRO MODERNE dishes closest to Jean François’ heart were the traditional, heart-warming Stuffed Pigs Feet, but DB Bistro signature dishes such as a bold Tomato Tart Tatin with Goat Cheese, Boeuf en Gelée, Foie Gras and Horseradish Cream and the deliciously irreverent DB Burger stuffed with red wine-braised short ribs and foie gras show that he had become equal parts daring New Yorker and Rhône Valley culinary whiz-kid, not to mention, winner of the James Beard Foundation's award for Rising Star Chef of 2002. This is clearly the pedigree of a young man well placed at the helm of the kitchen at DANIEL.
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