Chardon 2.0 As most of you know, I have been living in Arles since 2015 and have been through the UNBELIEVABLE adventure that is the chardon (with @lauravidalsomm and @harry.cummins ) in a very up close & personal way. My office is above the kitchen, and when I am not away, you can bet that I am there, or downstairs leaning over the counter asking for chocolate of any kind. I have witnessed the curve of the residency time and time again - the anxte of an opening night, the high pressure I see chefs put on themselves and how this pressure dissolves slowly over time until there is a rhythm to the residency, an understanding... and all of a sudden, it’s time to change chefs! I have seen how our team has adapted to the ebb and flow of different personalities. Mikael, our plongeur, has been working with us since 2015. He has seen it all and takes notes for when he eventually opens his own project. Thomas is starting his fifth year with us, is now completely part of my family, and what he has brought to the chardon is extraordinary. The wine program is a living, breathing entity unto itself. I have seen the greatest clashes of ego end in tears and many, many conversations in that office with its chairs hanging from the ceiling that try to reconcile someone who is showing their creative world, potentially for the first time, with someone who is trying to do their best, but in a different language or style. And I have seen alliances form that are still as strong as ever, years later, magical bonds that are woven in the late summer nights and the early market mornings. And after everything the world has been through in the past two years that has left everyone’s mental make-up in a bit of a mess, I was asking myself a LOT of questions about the chardon. How can I continue to pilot a restaurant that changes so quickly, that asks so much of people on a mental and physical level, where creative pressure meets the breaking down of the machines and the heat gets to 45° in the summer and people have put up these guards in their hearts as a natural defense to the permeation of fear that this whole virus has provoked... CONTINUED IN COMMENTS