LUXURY CAN BE A POTATO AND AN ONION
“Luxury can be a potato and an onion” said chef Francis Mallmann and it resonated with the thinking of Maison Bodega.
“I love opposites! I love contradictions; I think human beings need contradictions. We need opposites. We need to sleep in a five-star hotel and we need to sleep under a tree. The distance and the difference between those two extremes are what makes us happy and what makes us think and what makes us grow. If you only sleep under a tree, it’s quite sad. If you only sleep in a five-star hotel, it’s extremely sad, too. So, I think that we need those contrasts in life – in every way!” - Francis Mallmann
For our most recent selection of vintage and antiques, we explore the the tension between new pieces and storied ones - where spaces feel gathered, not staged, the mature harvest brought inside, candlelight catching on glass and brass. Our perspective is simple, make the useful beautiful without polishing away where it came from.
1886 engraving of Parmentier showing potatoes to Louis XVI.
Early in the 1770s Antoine-Augustin Parmentier is supposed to have persuaded Louis XVI to let him plant a field of potatoes just outside Paris. Parmentier posted ostentatious "guards" to protect the crop. The curiosity of the Parisians was aroused and the field was plundered with the result that it became chic to grow potatoes.
Parmentier compounded the potato's new reputation by giving a court dinner at which every course included tubers. He even persuaded Marie Antoinette to wear potato flowers in her hair.
Potato flower. Engraving in Petit Journal, March 1901.
Photograph of a statue dedicated to Parmentier, image c. 1914
Parmentier's highly developed marketing skills mean that now many classic French dishes are prefixed by his name and if you see Parmentier on a menu it means potato.
Potatoes are left on Parmentier’s grave to this day.