BLACKBOOK THE NEIGHBOURHOOD QUARTIER COLLABORATIVE Attracted by a gastronomically inspired entrepreneur, an ensemble of leading designers and top restaurateurs is coming together to reshape Paris’s northern Marais, as Jeffrey T Iverson discovered Paris has often been accused of lagging behind New York and London as capitals of design and innovation (and, frankly, creative entrepreneurship in general). But today, a profound urban transformation occurring in a hitherto somnolent Paris neighbourhood might be proof that’s changing. Two dozen internationally renowned designers have gathered around an unprecedented project – creating an entire new quartier dedicated to ecology, gastronomy and design, dubbed La Jeune Rue. Philippe Martin, as French environment minister, lauded it as “a bridge between virtuous agriculture and the capital”, but this is no government initiative. La Jeune Rue is the vision of a fortysomething entrepreneur whom the French media are calling a modern-day Gatsby – Cédric Naudon. Several years ago, Naudon was living contentedly with his wife and daughter in the United States, where he’d made his fortune in finance. Then one night he found himself steeped in nostalgia at 3am watching the French gastronomic travel show, Carte postale gourmande. Food and family were the ingredients of his happiest childhood memories in France – cooking and sharing meals, searching for exquisite regional produce on holidays together, visiting the restaurants of iconic chefs like Meneau or Robuchon. (He’d dreamed of becoming a chef himself, he says, but “went into finance to please my parents”.) That night, Naudon decided to return home. “It was food that brought me back,” he smiles. Back in Paris, Naudon’s passion finally became his business. In 2012, he relaunched the Ile-Saint- Louis restaurant Le Sergent Recruteur with chef Antonin Bonnet – a Michel Bras protégé – and the ILLUSTRATION BARTOSZ KOSOWSKI 46 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
