We had been warned: Louise Bourrat is not “very connected”. And the rumor was confirmed. Candidate for Top Chef season 13, the 26-year-old chef is far from addicted to her phone and is doing very well. “I’m not very tech-savvy. That’s to say, I don’t even have an application for my bank yet, says the young chef. I keep physically going to the bank like an old timer and everyone is laughing at me. »
Read also >> Meeting with Louise Bourrat, our top chef
Last woman in the competition
After a hotel BTS, a stint at Ducasse and Mandarin Oriental, the young chef flew to Latin America before settling in Portugal where she is at the head of the restaurant « Boubou’s » in Lisbon. Louise Bourrat entered the Top Chef competition, to “get out of her comfort zone”, as she told us in an interview last March.
The only woman still present in the competition, a chef committed to « zero waste » and a feminist, Louise surrounded herself with women in the restraint of her restaurant – even if a boy recently joined the ranks – and evokes gender inequalities in the profession and in Portugal. “The men I worked with in the kitchen had a hard time accepting that I was a woman, younger than them,” she told us.
Notifications every 4 minutes
More comfortable with a spatula in hand than her phone, the chef still lives with the times. Because to manage a restaurant today, it is impossible for her to ignore “ZenChef”. The French application allows him to manage reservations and see the reviews left by customers. Constantly caught up in the sound of notifications “I receive them every 4 minutes”, the application allows him to be in constant contact with the restaurant. Since the beginning of the Top Chef adventure, Louise admits: “The restaurant is full all the time so I don’t even look anymore, I know it’s full. »
And who says notoriety, necessarily says a surge of comments – more or less sympathetic – from followers of the show who defend their darlings or knock out the other candidates with tweets. “I’ve never set foot on Twitter and it wouldn’t be a good idea to go there,” says Louise, who prefers “self-protection”. « Criticism always hurts even when you have your head on your shoulders, so I don’t take the risk of being bitten, » says the chef. The only account on the platform that finds favor in his eyes? “Top Chef’s Instagram account but that’s it. »
“I prefer to be connected to life”
Social network acclaimed by many chefs, Instagram has nevertheless become « the place to be » when you want to showcase your culinary talents. Louise managed her restaurant’s Instagram account during the pandemic – almost 14,000 subscribers – but « clearly I think it’s work, skills and time that I don’t have », regrets the chef.
“The days are 24 hours long and my job is to cook, so I don’t have my phone with me all the time. I could take the time but I prefer to use it to be connected to life and take advantage of my free time to contemplate, read a book or take care of my plants, » explains Louise who insists, « I try to have a relationship healthy with my phone because I know I already spend way too much time on it ».
“Nobody cares that I went to eat steak tartare”
To take pictures of dishes, for example. A few days ago, she immortalized the dish she had just eaten in a restaurant in Lisbon. “Fermented broccoli with fermented honey. It was with a Brazilian chef. I’m taking advantage of doing a bit of publicity for them to let them know a little more, even if I don’t think they necessarily need me. It’s solidarity between restaurateurs, ”explains the chef. Even if she assures her « I’m not very good at taking photos, I try, but the result is so bad that I don’t necessarily post them ».
In her photo library, Louise mainly has snapshots of her dishes for her personal archives, “to have a frame and see how they improve over time”. Post pictures of what she eats on Instagram? « I do it and I tell myself that I should post them but then I say to myself ‘no one cares that I went to eat a steak tartare' », laughs the chef.
Spotify in the kitchen
If tomorrow she loses her phone, Louise would be very far from being bothered, on the contrary, « I lose it all the time, I’ve already spent a month without it and frankly it wasn’t a problem for me “, she confides. But there is still an application that she cherishes and uses daily in the kitchen, without having anything to do with her job: « My spotify account is the thing I care about the most in the world, she says without hesitation. » When some would rather mention their provided address book, their memorable text messages or their souvenir photos, Louise would be distraught at losing her musical subscription. « I’ve had it for a long time, it’s calibrated to phew, it’s the most precious thing in my eyes in my phone, » she insists.
Very big fan of music – almost as much as cooking -, Louise Bourrat confides that at the moment in the restaurant, « I have a little return to rock, I listen to the old albums of the Red Hot Chili Peppers » during the in place of the service. But the musical line of his restaurant is above all “universal”. “A good Artic Monkey, Manu Chao, these kinds of groups or artists bring together different generations, people of different nationalities. Because culturally in the restaurant we are very different, but musically, we always find commonalities”.
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