He is well-known at Nice Premium, as he was the founder and led the newspaper for many years, but Franck Viano is also recognized for his “voluntary” involvement in the world of Niçoise cuisine. He is sounding the alarm to protect one of the jewels of Niçois heritage in every possible way: its cuisine.
Organizer and presenter of “Chef for a Day,” involved in Niçoise schools with his Niçoise Cuisine workshop (a game around main recipes and a Pan Fruchat cooking workshop), former member of Capelina d’Or and Label Cuisine Nissarde, he is also part of the collective currently working on the candidacy of Niçoise Cuisine to UNESCO.
For the past few days, the “boufaillisse” of the famous Mado has also gone to his “head” and Hélène Darroze’s Niçoise salad and the Saupiquet brand (photo below) have been slammed by Niçoise cuisine. It’s true that one features chicken and red onions, and in both, you find the now traditional green beans and potatoes, a heavy legacy of Chef Auguste Escoffier.
“This really doesn’t make any sense. Between the giants of the food industry and now the top chefs, especially those on television, enough is enough! We all really need to work, those who like each other well, less well, not too much, not at all, and the rest on what we’re all passionate about: Niçoise Cuisine. We must find a way to stop the massacre!” protests Franck Viano.
“The problem is that despite everything we can achieve locally (competitions, associations, projects…), and sometimes in Paris or abroad, publications or products like these undermine our work because their reach is much greater through the media and social networks,” explains the former organizer of “Chef for a Day.”
Thus, the project of Niçoise Cuisine at UNESCO was born about a year ago between seven enthusiasts of Niçoise Cuisine: “We are working on the project, but each has their professional and/or associative activities on their own, and it’s never easy to gather chefs, cooking teachers, and a musician writer. For this year, we’ve decided to skip our turn, so the goal is March 31, 2017, the deadline for submitting the application. We were very lucky to have been joined by Karine Brun, who worked for a few years at UNESCO Paris and is very active in the local culinary world.”
But the project has also faced another obstacle, explains Franck Viano: “In fact, we cannot submit the dossier via a simple Association Loi 1901, so we are looking for the ideal partner, what UNESCO calls a Member State, who will support us in this project and will guarantee the submission.” No doubt the local authorities will certainly have a benevolent eye on this project that could bring another cuisine, after the French one in 2010, into UNESCO’s cultural and intangible heritage.
“Still, we have to achieve it, and it still has to be enough to oblige these people to correctly use the name of Niçoise recipes marketed under penalty of prosecution, but with UNESCO entry, it will be much easier to ‘discuss’ at first. After all, there are plenty of other salad names that could characterize their preparations: azurian salad, coastal salad…” jokes Franck, who sometimes wishes the days could last 36 hours.
In short, whether or not they are candidates for UNESCO, the defenders of Niçoise Cuisine have not finished getting gray hairs because sometimes there’s no need to go to Paris or on social networks to see these sacrileges…
