Re: What do you believe?

Description: Pepin believes that life's most anything can be solved at the dinner table.

Question: Do you have a personal philosophy?

Transcript: Well my philosophy is to go to the market; to get the best product that I can do; to get home; to cook it with my wife or a couple of friend; to sit together; to drink a few bottle of wine; to enjoy the food; and to have discussion and arguments and all that.  Because the discussion itself is part of the table.  The table itself is the place where you bring those things together.  And that’s why it’s so important to sit down and eat together.  I mean at the Congress of Vienna in 1824 I believe, it was Louis XVIII who sent Tallarin. . . Tallarin was the French Prime Minister, and I think Louis XVIII tell him something to the effect, “I need to give you more advisors.”  He said, “No, no I need more cooks and more pots.  That’s what I need more.”  And it’s true, you know?  In a certain extent, the deals are created around the table.  There is nothing as seductive, if you want, than a good table, the right wine.  This is where the discussions are.  And if you don’t do that with your children or your wife then you never talk to one another.  You pass life without even realizing it.  And this is not to say that you don’t argue.  You should argue.  We have to argue because who said that . . . consensus is the negation of leadership, anyway.  So you do have to argue and we do.  But to be together, to be able to share . . .  I mean go to a foreign country, you know, and you take another language . . .  I remember being in Yugoslavia 20 some years ago and being in the mountains.  And people would open their door and their window and look at the foreigner going down the street.  And they kind of . . .  You know they kind of mistrust you as you may do that.  But you sit at the table, and you offer someone a glass of wine or a piece of bread.  If you share food and wine, and all of a sudden you’re much less dangerous looking or whatever.  This is how you bring people together – by dialogue, you know?

Question: Do religion and faith inform your world view?

Transcript: I am born Catholic because I just happened to be born on this side of the street.  But I am an agnostic, or probably a pantheist.  For me, when I go mushrooming in the wood, the wood are my ______, you know?  And I walk with my dog at the sea.  The sound of the sea is the church music, you know?  And so I believe that I would not impose any religion on anyone, and I feel that there is only one thing that people agree to, whether it’s the Jew, or the Catholic, or the Muslim or other.  They agree that one God exists.  Well if we can agree at least that far, then people should understand that if you happen to be born on this side of the street, this is the way you worship that God.  And if you are born there then this is the way you worship it.  If you are born there . . .  but it all goes to the same place.  And for me, when I saw the garden in spring growing, start coming out of the ground, and the leaves start coming on the _________, that’s when I believe in God, you know?  Because it’s extraordinary for me, nature. Always there is a miracle in the garden of spring, in the growing of things in that season.  It’s something which is fascinating – to see something which does make you believe in God.  I mean as Voltaire used to say, there is a clock so there must be a clock maker.  And the clock for me is maybe nature.  So that’s why I say I’m probably a pantheist in that sense.

Question: Does the metaphor of the seasons resonate with you?

Transcript: I feel that all season are extraordinary.  I mean the winter season as well.  There is dishes that you will do in the winter season – from _________ to onion soup that you are not going to have in full summer.  So I think that the seasons are extremely important for me.  I could not live in a place where I don’t have the season.  And I’m looking forward to any season, whether it’s the oyster in the fall, you know, or the game in the fall; or then certain type of vegetables that I eat only in winter.  And of course I’m dying to wait by mail June for the first strawberries as well as the peas out of the garden.  So the season is a great part of my cooking.

Question: What is the measure of a good life?

Transcript: The measure of the good life is this, you know: To be able, first, certainly to travel.  Travel is very important for anyone, especially for political figure, you know, to be able to see how other people live; how other people think; to maybe try to entertain the possibility that someone else may be right, even though you probably don’t believe it.  But another point of view, you know?  So you have to look at other point of view, and there is no better place to look at other point of view than to sit down around a table, to share food, to share wine, and to discuss things, you know?

Recorded on: 9/4/07