Emile Jung at the Crocodile © Maurice Rougemont
It is a voluminous book (nearly 400 pages), published without a publisher’s name, signed Monique and Emile Jung, and available at the Crocodile restaurant in Strasbourg. It’s called “A School of Life” – great title! – and it resembles what the Anglo-Saxons call a “scrap-book”: a composite album made up of souvenir photos, texts of tributes, multiple testimonies, stories of meetings, all ordered by Maurice Roeckel, an excellent – and long-standing – connoisseur! – of Alsatian cuisine, who was both a journalist and restaurateur. Under his leadership, the great Emile, who was the founding father of modern Alsatian cuisine, came back to life in a beautiful way. From his beginnings at Masevaux to his conquest of the stars, up to the part of the 3rd in 2002 – which provides the opportunity for an exciting chapter -, his influence in the fields of table and wine, without omitting winks of take a look at literature, with menus dedicated each year to Goncourt academicians: friends, companions, family members tell their stories. Monique, who was his muse, his muse, his fervent support, his faithful accomplice, with this mixture of firmness, tenderness and poetry that we knew of him, brings her stone to the building. We will not find any recipes here, even if the indulgence is always present. And we will remember that Emile was the godfather, nay, the initiator of so many young and old chefs today. To find out everything about him, click here.
A school of life, by Monique and Emile Jung, texts by Maurice Roeckel (Au Crocodile, 395 pages, €35).
