Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts
Breaking The Fourth Wall

THE REVIEW

In the beginning, there was Jack and Jack had a groove. That groove which gave birth to house. "Can you feel it"—how many times have we enjoyed it alongside the other track that invited us to pump up the volume? You taste "Mindtrap", the first course at Chez Guillaume, and it feels like that flavor even though the rhythm is more funky and the voices are strongly whispered. As you reach halfway through the dish, you savor in succession trumpet, sax, drums, cymbals, and keyboards in the form of exotic spices capable of transforming a simple dish into something hard to forget. It makes you want to know more about such skill.

You visit his space and discover that Chef Guillaume acts as a percussionist in a funk group, a student of classical and Latin rhythm, and finally as an electro-acoustic composer with influences ranging from concrete music to techno. You find out he’s not a DJ but someone who takes his band around to perform live in clubs worldwide. Canadian by birth, residing in Berlin, presumably in good company.

But let's go back to the dinner in question, saying that the second appetizer confirms what was appreciated with the first. While waiting, we note from the menu that the sonic gastronomy is made up of a special blend of funk, house, techno, gospel, swing, and afro-beat. And I would add a lot of Blue Note style jazz just because the third course, which consists of "32 tons of pigeons", is completely immersed in it. A recipe so successful that people like Laurent Garnier, Llorca, and Dominic Navarre, just to name the French, would do anything to obtain it. Now I could continue to say how much goodness is enjoyed in the other 8 courses of this exquisite cuisine. To rave about each one on how much flavor reaches the palate in terms of experimentation, harmony, emotional depth, and compositional richness. However, I might risk boring you because everyone can enjoy the many nuances and focus on the varied fragments that make this work one of the most convincing surprises of 2010.

Three Michelin stars, book in advance.