He speaks with butchers, artisan butter, cheese, and cream makers, vegetable farmers, and local fisherman, to see what their most recent harvests and catches have yielded. Then, based on the availability and freshness of ingredients, Hardy composes his ever-evolving menu.

Though his mantra is “authenticity, quality, and simplicity,” Philippe Hardy’s cuisine is far from the traditional casseroles and ratatouilles of France. His favourite dish to prepare is wild salmon, just fished from the cool waters off of Blainville sur Mer, the Norman sun-soaked village along the Baie de la Sienne, where his restaurant, Le Mascaret, is nuzzled.

 Hardy’s salmon is infused with an argosy of different aromas that are endemic to his native region of Normandy. He is to spices what poetry is to words; his dishes are of a seasoned eloquence - a fusion of the locally grown peppered with the exotically foreign.

Among the favoured spices used by Hardy are parsley root, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes, and flowers – roses, daisies, and daffodils. Hardy cooks with a variation of 20 types of tomatoes and 10 kinds of salt, all a testament to his lifelong vocation of bringing wholesome, nutritive, and diverse natural foods directly from the land and sea to the plate. 

Having travelled extensively and worked closely with culinary greats such as Alain Ducasse, Joel Robuchon, and Gérard Legruel, Hardy prepares a very refined and relentlessly evolving cuisine. Among his recent culinary quips are crab-filled cannelloni seasoned with licorice root, foie gras carpaccio with citrus fruit and black cumin, and simmered carrot seasoned with burnet, though his combinations are relentlessly evolving. 

On days when Le Mascaret is open, Hardy spends an average of 11 hours a day in the kitchen. When preparing a dish, Hardy takes into account all of its elements; its appearance, its taste, and its smell. He ensures that each vegetable is just at the point of its maturity and that each slice of meat or fish is fragrantly fresh and exquisitely garnished. Hardy’s signature cooking style is “staying close to the earth,” blending all of the natural goodness found in his native Normandy to the point at which a meal at Le Mascaret becomes an otherworldly experience.

Hardy’s earthy inventiveness in the kitchen is greatly enhanced by the decorative vision of his wife and partner, Nadia Hardy. Nadia believes that eating in a restaurant should be “an occasion for delicate extravagance; a departure from the ordinary,” and has thus transformed Le Mascaret into a whimsy-tinged epicurean refuge.

A subtle, warm orange glow emanates through diaphanous floor-length drapes. The modern, playfully tear-shaped plates tease the tradition of the ornately gilded gold mirrors and elegantly papered walls. Though the surroundings might suggest a fairytale, plush crimson velvet upholstered chairs and an elegant, ample floor space are a subtle homage to the famed castles of France.

To celebrate the apotheosis of “Créativité, Révolution by Design,” Philippe and Nadia brought Le Mascaret to New York, where they scintillated all of our senses with an exquisitely prepared three-course meal, culminating in a massive display of pistachio, chocolate, rose, and chestnut flavoured macarons.