For a long time, I have been convinced that the way we feed ourselves defines who we are. Beyond its essential nurturing function, cooking is also an essential social act. There is no people without languages or cuisine. Like language, cuisine unites a people around a common identity. This is where I quote my favorite phrase from Claude Levi-Strauss: “The cuisine of a society is a language in which it unconsciously translates its structure, unless without knowing any better, it resigns itself to revealing its contradictions”. You can also find this sentence in our manifesto which, I think, is quite clear on the tastes, choices, and values of Menu Fretin.
Menu Fretin is a 100% family owned company. We invested our savings in it to launch it and we reinvest the profits from good years to compensate for the losses from more complicated years. If we are financially independent, we are especially so editorially. We only publish what we like and what we want to read or introduce you to. We publish books by chefs – only those whose cuisine and personality we like – essays – because for food to be good to eat, it must also be good to think about – and old works – because cooking represents our culture, our history and that it is this history that makes who we are. We also publish weird works from time to time because we like to do so.
All our books are imagined, written, laid out, stored, and shipped from our small office in Chartres (30 square meters). We have worked with the same printer since the beginning. He is also in Chartres. Not because we don’t like traveling but because printing books on the other side of the world seems silly to us and loyalty in business (as in life) is an enriching and indispensable value. Our books are designed to last. However, our secret hope is that, at home, they are stained, dog-eared, damaged. This would mean that you read them, used them, lent them, lost them, found them… in short, that they gradually became part of your life. – Laurent, Fretin Founder
My friend Alec Lobrano just told me about a unique French culinary publishing house, Fretin (the website is in both French and English). A food lover’s fantasy, they republish tomes of historic interest (The Pleasures of the Table by Édouard Nignon, the most famous cook of the early 20th century), and produce their own quirky culinary books (The Japanese Restaurants of Paris).
In addition, they have brought back Pomiane’s Radio Cuisine Radio Cuisine. Pomiane was a doctor and scientist with a big heart (he worried about the suffering of lobsters), and an extraordinary ability to simplify cooking. His books are wonderful, but I’ve always wished I could listen to the radio show he produced on Friday nights from 1923 to 1929. It was probably the first cooking show ever broadcast. What a thrill to travel through time and listen to a show that is almost one hundred years old. – Ruth Reichl, Dreaming of Paris, 15 Dec 2021
