Auberge du Vert Mont – Rural Fire, Fermentation & French Soul
Before Modena, before Italy, before the fine dining precision and the grand theatre of Osteria Francescana — there was France.
Auberge du Vert Mont in the north, almost kissing the Belgian border, was my first real step into the world of gastronomy outside Denmark. Not a polished metropolis restaurant. Not white tablecloth glamour. No — this was farm country. Mud, herbs, smoke, vegetables pulled from soil only hours before service, and the kind of cooking rooted deeper than recipes.
It was raw.
It was human.
And it changed everything I was as a young cook.
French farmhouse cooking with real backbone
People talk about farm-to-table like it’s some marketing idea. At Vert Mont, it wasn’t a concept — it was the daily rhythm. Vegetables came in covered with soil. Animals were delivered whole. Herbs were cut fresh from the garden behind the house. And every ingredient had identity, history, purpose.
The cuisine was rural French food sharpened through intuition, not ego. No unnecessary tricks. No garnishes for Instagram. Just flavour. Depth. Smoke. Time.
Florent Layden, who took over from his father, steered this family inn into Michelin recognition without sacrificing its honesty.
He didn’t want us to cook like someone else — he wanted us to cook like Vert Mont.
Vegetables were not garnish — they were the heart
This was where I truly learned to respect vegetables — not in a romantic or poetic way, but as the history and knowlegede of flavours we gain as never stop exploring chefs.
We often preferred vegetables just under ripe, not fully matured, because the structure held better bite, and the flavour was more concentrated. Crunch mattered. Water content mattered. A carrot should snap, not collapse. Young beets stay earthy but not muddy. Cabbage grills beautifully without turning to mush while you get char on the edges, sweetness inside, and still enough bite to hold vinaigrettes, fermented juices or browned butter without collapsing or losing its natural taste.
The cooking was deeply seasonal.
Autumn meant roots, kales, herbs and fruits still hanging on to the last warmth of summer. I still remember the late-season cold and how we greeted guests with a warm vegetable bouillon packed with garden herbs, almost like a handshake saying: Welcome in to the warmth. This is the land and surroundings you’re eating.
Nothing imported for glamour. Just what the soil and local farmers gave — treated properly.
Fermentation, lacto-magic & building menus for the future
Vert Mont was also where is first time learned about fermentation and became to be a important tool for me as a chef — a weapon in new carbonated flavours and conservations.
We lacto-fermented with salt, water and controlled acidity to preserve the healthy bacterias while we put and end to the bad ones. Simple method, endless results. Vegetables were jarred, left to ferment in brine or its own juices and sometimes balanced with vinegar depending on the profile we needed. For example seared scallops parried with lacto-fermented lingonberries. These jars allowed us to pull off-season flavours into the next menu cycle when gardens were bare and frost owned the fields. I tasted some pickled small cucumber they had preserved over 5 years in a big jar hidden away in the backend of a shed, that exploded in the mouth as soon you took a bite. It amazed me that a simple ingredient can make so big impact when you use the right fermentation rules to create something new and better than what it was before.
Menus changed every month and every chef contributed.
Ideas were debated, tested, and sometimes fought for. Florent believed this freedom built passion, curiosity and morale. I agree. Nothing fuels a cook like knowing your ideas might hit the dining room next month. Fermentation was our library and
season was our calendar.
The bonfire — heat, steel & cooking with no curtain
In the centre of the dining room burned a fire.
Not a decoration but a real station to forge and cook in front of guests.
We grilled scallops there, blistered fish skin until it crackled like paper, roasted pigeons until tender and smoky, cooked lobsters and shellfish in their shells. Salt-aged hams hung above us, perfuming the room with slow time and fat.
Guests watched us work with excitement and so was was we when cooking a seared juicy fish to perfection . Cooking without hiding in the back teaches you discipline fast.
You don’t talk your way out of mistakes when a table can smell them.
Potatoes, beef fat & Maroilles — because some things deserve worship
I can’t talk about Vert Mont without mentioning the fries.
They are simply one of the purest expressions of flavour I’ve seen in a humble ingredient.
Potatoes fried only in beef fat, tossed in white wine vinegar and salt, then topped with a warm and creamy Maroilles cheese foam from a siphon. Its a local cheese from the north of france that have lot of history behind its unique nutty and earthy taste.
Crunchy fries and simply flavours with acidity and umami. Nobody tried to pretend it was fancy.
It was just perfect and simple.
What truly stayed with me wasn’t on the plate — it was the people
.When I think back, the strongest memory isn’t the techniques or even the food.
It’s the warmth. The hospitality. The feeling of being adopted into something.
Families and collegas invited me into their homes on days off — long dinners, too much wine, too many toasts, arguments about food and politics that got louder while eating diffrent cheeses as the bottles emptied. Tables full of food. Family members shouting across the room.
It was messy, loud, generous — and incredibly human.
That’s what France gave me.
A sense of belonging. A kitchen with heart. A reminder that food isn’t meant to be quiet.
It brings people together — loudly.
And that part never washed off.
That was the soul of Vert Mont.
Not the Michelin star, not the fire rig, not even the fermentation shelf humming with life.
It was the feeling that food brings people together — fiercely, generously, without complication.
That’s the part that shaped me most.
