Jacquin opens Steak Bife, his fifth restaurant in SP in the last three years

The team was already ready while the guests were seated at the tables to follow the zum-zum-zum orchestrated by the French chef Erick Jacquin, who walked back and forth, sometimes giving orders in the kitchen, sometimes serving sparkling wine to those who arrived.

“None of this was ready until today”, he says, in a tone of confidence, at the end of the night. “The parrilla was still clean. Today was the first time we lit it.”

Despite his nervousness, the chef is quite used to opening nights. Located at the foot of one of the new buildings on Avenida Rebouças, in Pinheiros, Steak Bife is the fifth restaurant that Jacquin opens in São Paulo since the opening of Président, in 2019. The house welcomes the public from this Saturday, the 13th, at 7 pm.

In the red-walled lounge and open kitchen, the public can taste cuts of meat with a variety of side dishes served on a rotating basis.

You can choose between options such as rump heart (R$ 80 or less) or entrecôte (R$ 122), the sauce. Meanwhile, items like roasted pumpkin, cauliflower in béchamel sauce and salad arrive at the table. At lunch during the week, the meal costs R$ 88 with the daily cut plus salad.

Not everything is on the rotation, and the kitchen also has some recipes that can be ordered separately. This is the case with French fries, which cost R$22, and filet mignon steak tartare, served with fries and salad, for R$88.

The scheme is similar to that of Le Bife, at Itaim Bibi, for which Jacquin provided consultancy for years. But the chef’s first inspiration for the house is Boucherie, by his countryman Claude Troisgros. Opened 12 years ago in Rio de Janeiro, the restaurant won a São Paulo version in June, also in Itaim.

“He was the first to come up with this concept. The rodízio is very Brazilian, I’ve never seen it in France. It’s really cool, a mixture of French and ‘Brésilienne’. And when a concept is good, we don’t need to be ashamed of say it’s very good”, he says, with a heavy accent.

Jacquin himself has also been widely copied. One of his greatest contributions, if not the greatest, was to baptize the cupcake served hot with a creamy filling and a scoop of ice cream as petit gâteau, even when he arrived in the country in 1994.

“It didn’t exist in Brazil. I never said that I invented the recipe, it was made by a pastry chef from France. But it must be the best-selling dessert in the country today”, he supposes. “Then the Brazilian arrives in France and asks for a petit gâteau — but nobody knows what that is in France.”

On Rua da Consolação since 2019, the French haute cuisine restaurant Président marked the chef’s return to business after La Brasserie collapsed in 2013. Since then, Jacquin has led a curious sequence of openings.

In 2020, he took charge of Ça-Va, in Bela Vista, after getting to know the everyday French food bistro during the recordings of the reality show Pesadelo na Cozinha, which he commands on Band — the same broadcaster as Masterchef, a program that elevated the chef to celebrity status.

Later on, he opened the Italian restaurant Lvtetia (read Lutetia), close to the Président. The property also hides a bar, called Bar do Vaticano. “I always wanted to have an Italian restaurant,” she says.

Then there was a spot on Avenida Faria Lima, where the chef created a bar to call his own, Boteco do Jacquin — which, he admits, is far from being a boteco. “Maybe I was wrong a little, because it doesn’t look like a pub. I know that. I said ‘it’s going to be a modern pub’, but I don’t know if it exists.”

“As the Steak Bife is going to be round, I’m going to change the strategy of Boteco do Jacquin in Faria Lima a little bit.” The idea, then, is to create the first Ça-Va café on site, which, like Steak Bife, the chef wants to transform into franchises.

Have you given it to Jacquin yet? Apparently no. “My dream has always been to have a fish restaurant. After Steak Bife, there can be Fish Bife. Let’s see”, she aspires.

“I have two three-and-a-half-year-old twins and a 24-year-old son. So I have to work. I can’t stop now,” he says. “But I also like to work. I was away for years, just with dinners, events and television. I really missed all of that.”