Fork music

Ambassade de L’Ile is more than just another swanky London restaurant, and Jean-Christophe Ansanay-Alex is more than just its owner and chef. As Ian Macrae found out, it’s a little piece of Lyon in south Kensington

L’Ile Barbe is a tiny island in the middle of the River Saone. In 1977, following what’s described as “a well wet lunch”, the owner of a restaurant on the island and his clientele declared it an independent state. Now, courtesy of the restaurateur’s son, the state’s honorary governor, L’Ile Barbe has its own London embassy, too.

The ambience in Jean-Christophe’s (hereinafter known as JC) restaurant is not unlike his personality. Calm, somewhat laid-back, but serious about good food. And don’t expect background music.

“The only music,” says JC, “is the sound of the fork on the plate.”

On the face of it, JC is ripe for stereotyping. He’s French, a chef and disabled. You see, you may already be imagining a wildly gesticulating volatile character who may or may not have a chip on his shoulder. Wrong!

He in fact is something of a stereotype buster.

”Even when I was younger and without my disability I was thinking that we cannot put labels on
people, and everyone is different.

And now you cannot say that because we have a disability we’re less good than others.”

Having initially wanted to become a pastry chef, JC says eventually he fell more in love with cuisine because, he says, “Cuisine is more about sensitivity and flare.”

Of his native Lyonnais cuisine he says, “First of all it’s the pig. It’s all about sausages, bellies, snout, trotters, tail, ears. There are only two things you cannot eat, the eyes and the hair.

“My vision is to take traditional things, dust them off and prepare them in a more contemporary way.

So in Lyon, I prepare black pudding with scallops in a curry way and it matches perfectly.”

Having lost the use of his right arm in a car accident, JC now works with an assistant in the kitchen, the time-honoured, tried and tested way for gaining independence for many disabled people. But when I ask him for his favourite piece of kitchen equipment, JC’s answer is characteristically spiritual.

“The soul, that’s the most important thing in the kitchen, the spirit of the restaurant. After that, I like the stove, because you take a piece of meat or a fish and you can see the transformation process until it’s on the plate and going to the table.”