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How To Sample Anne-Sophie Pic's Michelin Three Star Food: Fly Air France

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French master chef Anne-Sophie Pic is that rarity in the restaurant world, a Michelin three star chef, the only woman holding that distinction in the kitchens of France. As a result, reservations at her eight restaurants including  her eponymous  restaurant in the family’s hotel in Valence, the Relais & Chateaux Maison PIC and her restaurant in Paris, La Dame de PIC, are tough to get. But passengers in Air France’s new upgraded business class from Paris from February to August (and in first, La Premiere, in August and September) will have a chance to sample the chef’s award winning cuisine without the wait.

It won’t be exactly the same, of course; as other chefs who have consulted for airlines know, dishes have to be adapted to the air.  Complex sauces that have to be served right after formulation obviously don’t work and the chef is eliminating other, particularly French ingredients that might not appeal to others such as rabbit, frogs legs and pigeon. “You also need to use lighter ingredients, perhaps oils instead of sauces and different textures,” said Mme. Pic on a 24 hour visit to New York in which she got to examine how her dishes were holding up while surprising  fellow passengers on her flight.  (February selections include lobster and celery with juniper berries and lemon as a starter and salmon with lentils, sweet spices and pickled onions as  a main course. ) But the chef’s distinctive blends of flavors assembled with a very light touch remain in their airline versions. “You want unusual flavors but subtle,” she said. “Combining flavors is my cuisine.”

She’ll undoubtedly have many opportunities to check on how well her airline dishes are doing in the next few months as she flies in from Paris to check on the progress of the restaurant she’s creating in New York,  a U.S. version of La Dame de PIC along with a more casual restaurant, Metcafe due to open around the end of the year in midtown, 510 Madison Avenue at 53rd Street.  She knows New York from her student days here 20 years ago and will also adjust her menus slightly to “catch the spirit of New York” as she describes it.  But she doesn’t think they have to change that much. “There are not so many differences between the cities,” she says, “and the products are as good as anything in France.” That’s a great way to introduce herself to the city.

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