Feuille's David Toutain on happiness and going green

For David Toutain, it’s the people who matter most. And at Feuille, the people are the best there is. In town for the restaurant’s two-day-only farm-to-table anniversary event, he tells Stephenie Gee why

As the poet John Donne once penned, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” This is a truth that celebrated chef David Toutain understands well. At Feuille (pronounced “feuy” and French for “foliage”), his newly-appointed Michelin one- and green-star plant-forward fine-diner and the first overseas outpost of his eponymous two-starred Parisian restaurant, it’s the people – the team, the guests and the industry peers – who serve as its heart and soul.

“If you asked me 10 years ago, it would have been a different answer. But now what success means to me and what’s most important to me is when people are happy, when guests are happy, and when the people around me that I work with are happy,” the Normandy-born chef says. “I believe in people, I believe in connection, and I believe in this success because it’s what enabled us to be here now speaking. It’s not just about the two of us – it took 10, 15 people at the back working to make this happen.”

It’s only natural, then, that for Feuille’s recent anniversary celebration Toutain would turn the spotlight on the unsung heroes out in the fields. For two days in late April, some of our most trusted, sustainability-driven cooperatives were brought out from behind the scenes and into the restaurant’s dining room. These included Hung Yat Farm, a closed-loop labour of love embracing zero pesticide and chemical fertiliser methods to foster a harmonious partnership with nature; Conspiracy Chocolate, a small-batch bean-to-bar craft chocolate production house redefining guilt-free indulgence through a range of initiatives like direct sourcing, home compostable packaging and zero food waste practices; and R-Farm and Farmhouse Productions, both of which implement regenerative farming practices, each with their own unique approach. “The idea,” he explains, “was to bring in the people from the farms and shine a light on them because we want to promote these people, we want to speak about these people, and we want to help them and say, ‘Hey guys, you know, you work in a farm every day, but it’s because of you that we can be here and serve our food.’ And that for me is amazing. It’s brilliant.”

Finding the right people was no easy task, but it was worth spending the time to get right. “Before this project, we didn’t know one another. We had to create a connection, which is probably the most difficult but also the most exciting part for me of collaborations – figuring out how to work together and all our different roles in order for everything to work out. So it wasn’t easy, but it’s important, and we have worked very hard to find the right people. And now, we have a relationship with them that we can continue to build – I was at the farm the other day and they came to me and said, ‘This is what we’ll have for you in six months’, or ‘If you want that instead, I can do that for you’,” Toutain says.

What “right” means here, in his own words, is “people who believe in what they’re doing”. He recalls, “Yesterday, I was speaking to one of the farmers and I said, ‘Ah, thank you very much for the vegetable. It’s amazing.’ And they replied, ‘It’s not me, it’s Mother Nature! She gave it to me, and I’m just giving it to you.’ And it’s the same for us. We’re here to just cook, put it on a plate, and promote what you have in Hong Kong and what Mother Nature gives to us.”

And so produce will always take precedence on the plate at Feuille. The butter lettuce, for example. Playing on the classic French laitues braises, or braised lettuce, the butter lettuce sourced from Vegetable Marketing Organization (VMO) is fermented with banana, and complemented with more greens, some parsley pods, a celery purée and a serving of caviar on the side. “Which here is BS, actually,” Toutain admits with a laugh. “Normally, you’ll see caviar go first because it’s ooh la la French. But that goes on the side now so it’s more like a condiment – if [guests] want, they can add in the caviar as salt and a seasoning. Because what’s important here is the produce, the lettuce, and its texture and its flavours. After, for sure, you have the David Toutain touch, with my philosophy, character, whatever. And the result is something réconfortant, which means comforting, and something fresh and yummy. If you have one bite, you’ll want the second and third – you just want to keep eating.”

But what use, really, is quality produce without quality cooking from quality people? For Toutain, not much, because a good team, aligned and invested in his same values and vision, is the foundation of Feuille’s success. “Honestly, I always say I’m not looking for the best chef, I’m looking for the best person,” he says. “It’s very important that they be willing to learn, be willing to work with people, and be willing to help people. Before we opened, we had Joris [Rousseau] and the sous chef come over to the restaurant in Paris so we could show them our ways. The idea is to work together. It’s not about the food; it’s about the culture and mentality.”

Connection is Toutain’s grail so the kitchen at Feuille was designed purposely to facilitate communication. Natural light is plentiful with large and abundant windows, and walls and partitions are eschewed entirely in favour of a fully open-plan design to foster intimacy, cosiness and familial connections. “From the snack station to the fish and meat station, everything is flat and open,” Toutain says as we tour the space. “There are no walls because it’s not just about the food, it’s also the connection between people. And we wanted to create a space where you can see one another, you can talk to one another, and you can move around easily to all the different stations to work together, help one another and learn. This is very important.”

It can be a hard space to work in, no doubt – the pacing, the heat, the burns, the cuts, the heavy knees and swollen feet – but Toutain wouldn’t have it any other way. “We’re not stars, we’re just chefs, cooking. We just take the produce, we try to cook and we try to make people happy. It’s an amazing job, really,” he says. “We all have problems outside; it can be hard. You have stress, you can be sick or something like that. But for one hour, two hours, three hours, people come in and they can just sit at the table, eat, drink and enjoy. So I think this is a beautiful job, what we do. It’s not always easy, for sure, and it’s a lot of work. But it’s always very exciting being able to bring some bonheur, some happiness, to people.”

Also see: Magistracy Dining Room’s Alyn Williams on bringing a taste of London to Hong Kong