It would be easy for the uninitiated to walk past Gwenael Lesle’s French bistro in Wembley and assume it was just another suburban eatery with adequate food and service for a predominantly local clientele.
It would be easy for the uninitiated to walk past Gwenael Lesle’s French bistro in Wembley and assume it was just another suburban eatery with adequate food and service for a predominantly local clientele.
But behind the dark green doors of Bouchon Bistro and past the minimalist interior, which features several maps of France on the walls, is Mr Lesle’s kitchen, where his small team of chefs experiment with produce every day to conjure up innovate meals for the fast-changing menu.
Mr Lesle headed the kitchen at fine dining institution Friends for five years, before teaming up with former colleague Phillippe Kordics to establish Bouchon five years ago this month.
From the outset, fine food has been Mr Lesle’s focus, despite the lack of front-of-house glamour.
“This place used to be a cafe, not a restaurant, but we wanted a restaurant; and a good one,” Mr Lesle says.
“But we wanted people to be relaxed and so the idea was to do a bistro like in France.
“But the cuisine at bistros is very classical. If I cook classical dishes, I cook it how it has always been done and I don’t change it.
‘‘But I like new ideas and doing things differently and presenting things, so I thought the clash between looking like a bistro and the food I wanted to do would be interesting.”
Much about the casual feel to the restaurant is the direct result of Messrs Lesle’s and Kordics’ decision to set up on a very lean budget.
They took on the lease Cambridge Street lease because it was cheap. Mr Lesle took charge of the kitchen while Mr Kordics managed the front-of-house.
Mr Lesle says they couldn’t have turned the place into a fine dining venue, even if they had wanted to.
“Fine dining is a big investment and if you go that way you have to do it 100 per cent,” he says.
“Friends does that well; they have the quality crockery and glassware and all the other things. It is a big investment. I wasn’t ready to do that.”
But Mr Lesle says he compromised very little on the food because he was conscious of needing to get people back time and time again.
“People who come here don’t come here for the view or the thickness of the carpet. It is the food. If we did (fine dining) now I would change everything but the food.”
Mr Lesle has wanted to open his own restaurant since he first started cooking in Parisian kitchens.
It was after his 40th birthday, and after about 15 years in Australia, that he finally achieved his long-held ambition.
“When we opened it was hard financially but it was great to be free,” he says.
“I could do what ever I wanted.”
Freedom in the kitchen goes some way to explaining the cycle of the menu at Bouchon, which changes every seven weeks.
Mr Lesle likes to constantly try new things with no one dish featuring for any great length of time.
The current menu provides something of an indulgence for Bouchon’s regulars.
Mr Lesle’s has gone back and plucked out some of the venue’s more popular dishes and placed them on the menu.
The entrees include poached oysters and egg bistro on caramelised onion, cabernet and cinnamon jus and burgundy snails, and baccala croquette with wilted spinach and red capsicum coulis.
Main meal options include Margaret River venison loin, cepe and speck custard, quinoa, cumquat confit and cocoa sauce, and the biscuit and tataki of Tasmanian salmon, braised pork belly and red cabbage.
He says that, while more people are becoming more adventurous with their food choices, they’re also becoming more discerning, largely due to the growing number of quality restaurants in Perth.
Success, he says, is all about consistency.
“Good food consistently, that is the secret,’ Mr Lesle told Gusto.
“You have to have discipline and some fear, because you can’t conceive to make something bad.”
