Emile Bouillon

"Food, drink ... it is the one language we all know. It is, how you say ... universal, no?"

## Relationships

### Family

Albert Bouillon Jr. (father)Caroline Merlant Bouillon (mother)

## Career

### Title/Rank

Head Chef & Owner of French restaurant 'Le Petit Mémoire'

## Introduction

**Émile Bouillon** (**eh·meel** **bool·**yaan) is a French chef who has come to the wild lands of Odessa in attempts to write the first French-American cookbook. He is famously known in the city of Paris as the owner & head chef of *Le Petit Mémoire* - where Émile perfected his signature dish of duck confit & marzipan croissants. Fueled by jealousy & pride of wanting to be the most well known chef in all of France, Émile believes Odessa has all of the opportunities in which he needs in order to rise to the top (indeed, the crème de la crème), and to cement his spot as the most influential chef of gastronomy history.

## Biography

### Early Life

Émile was born on an unusually scorching hot day in late April. His parents would often remark that, upon Émile being born, there came a faint rainfall that caused the ground to sizzle with an overbearing warm steam for the rest of the day. His father, Albert, was a coal mine supervisor for a major oil field in the nearby city of Versailles. His mother, Caroline, was a nurse who was at the forefront of spreading the word of pediatric medicine. She would often take care of sick & orphaned children, at the expense of leaving Émile to grow up without much of a motherly presence.

However, this left Émile plenty of time to explore the delights & treats that the city of Paris had to offer. When his schooling for the day had finished, he would often stick his face up to the glass windows of the neighboring bakeries & restaurants. Friendly bakers & chefs would invite young Émile into their business to help with menial tasks (such as putting away inventory, or washing dirty towels) in exchange for a nourishing, hot meal.

As Émile grew, so did his responsibilities. Three days after his fourteenth birthday, Émile's mother passed away due to complications of cholera. He soon picked up his first paying job at *Cafe Des Artistes*, a bustling night-time bistro where he first began to cultivate his proficiency in baking, cooking, and hospitality. Émile would meet so many people of the arts, where they would often remark on his exceptional charisma and attention to detail, and seeing his boundless potential.

> "Oh, jeune Émile, tu es un magicien dans la cuisine. Quel est ton secret?"
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> "Oh, young Émile, you are a magician in the kitchen. What is your secret?" — Sarah Bernhardt, actress
>
>

A month before he were to attend college to study literature, Émile received a letter from Jacques Saulnier, one of the most famous French chefs of the 1870s. Chef Saulnier traveled to the Bouillon home, and cooked for Émile & his father. At dinner, Chef Saulnier expressed interest in having Émile be under his tutelage in the city of Lyon, three hundred miles away from Paris. Hesitant to leave his father alone, Émile politely declined Saulnier's invitation at first. But with his father's absolute blessing & reassurance, Émile decided to accept Saulnier's offer. At seventeen years old, Émile left for the food capital of France that very next morning.

### The Saulnier Program

The next four years for Émile would be an arduous time as he devoted his life to all things food. He and other select few had to endure Saulnier's rigid & brutal curriculum as they were trained during the week from 6:00AM sharp to 2:00PM in the afternoon. The hour lunch break was a much needed respite from the day, whether it be to scarf down a quick meal or take a short nap. From 3:30PM - 10:00PM, the recruits would prepare & perform a dinner service in order to feed the guests of Saulnier's fabled restaurant, *Dionysos*. The menu changed daily.

Weekends were dedicated to leisure & rest. While the others would indulge in alcohol & lovemaking, Émile took a job working at one of Saulnier's other food ventures - a pie shop by the name of *Miel*. At the age of twenty, Émile was chopping through an egregious amount of onions to prepare for a large order of shepherd's pie for an upcoming wedding. In walked Marie Tautou, who came to *Miel* to pick up some last minute pastries for her mother's birthday. She was quite amused by the large amount of tears running down Émile's face as he rung her up - the two hit it off instantly. They were married months later.

However, by the final year of Saulnier's apprenticeship, tensions between the newlyweds began to arise. Émile was more focused than ever on seeing his apprenticeship to completion. By this time, he and only two others were left remaining from the original group of twenty five. Unsatisfied with the lack of happiness in their married life, Marie turned to finding the company of other men much more appealing. On her twentieth birthday, Émile came home with a lemon meringue pie - the same pie they bonded over when they first met. He found Marie in their bed with another man. They asked for a small bite of the pie as he walked out his own home. They divorced a week later.

The final week of the Saulnier program came, and with it came the final assignment: *Create a meal of your happiest memory.*

Missing both his father and late mother quite terribly, Émile responded with a modest effort of duck confit & almond croissants stuffed with marzipan. Saulnier was particularly moved by Émile's connection to this meal, and was awarded with top marks upon his completion of the apprenticeship. And so Émile moved back home, where the people of Paris eagerly awaited for his return ... and for his eventual restaurant that he would open.

### Claim to Fame

Within months of returning back home, Émile was already putting the finishing touches to the grand opening of *Le Petit Mémoire*. The menu & decor were simple, refined, yet elegant. Powerful politicians, well-known celebrities, and royal families of an undeniable prestige would travel from all over the world to dine at his restaurant. For many, they would have to reserve a spot in order to dine - usually a month in advance. There would be weekly lottery-style giveaways where the lucky winner would be able to dine at Le Petit Mémoire for free, with their meal being prepared by Émile himself. No matter where you were in Paris, someone was always talking about the life-changing food of Head Chef Bouillon.

But with fame came pressure. Émile couldn't escape the adoration of his fellow French people. It began to suffocate Émile, he despised the thought that these people only wanted to be in Émile's company due to his prestige & fame, rather than who he actually was outside of the kitchen. Not only that, but Émile couldn't bear to change up the flavors & core items on his menu at *Le Petit Mémoire* (for fear of losing his fanbase) - which resulted in him remaining stagnant and making the same food for years on end. By the age of 32, the people of Paris were beginning to become bored of Émile's novelty and were hungry to try out new culinary delights.

In comes his soon-to-be rival, Chef Boyardee. A younger, more charismatic, and more handsome chef than Émile, the people of France flocked to Boyardee's establishment where flavors of Thailand & Italy forged together - a restaurant by the name of *Title One* (note: this was due to combining "thai" and the "tal" in Italy, therefore "title"). To make matters worse, Émile's ex-wife Marie soon found herself married to the now #1 chef of Paris. Confused & distraught, Émile decided to dine in disguise at *Title One* in order to find some answers. Upon trying the signature dish, a spicy pad kee mao (drunken noodle) comprised of Italian ingredients, Émile was moved to bittersweet tears. He needed to change his approach & contributions to the culinary landscape, or else he will be soon forgotten.

## The Opportunity of Odessa

And so Émile decided to go off to this New World on the western side of the world in order to author its first cookbook. He chose his destination to be the state of Odessa, due to its varied landscape that was host to a plethora of different wildlife & vegetation. The goal for his cookbook was simple: *create a signature dish for every major town & city, and to document the process in an autobiographical fashion*. His plan was to finish this book within a year. And so at the age of thirty-three, Émile said his goodbyes to his father and to the employees of *Le Petit Mémoire,* and sailed westward to the wild lands of Odessa.

### Strawberry's Trio Jam

On September 26th, 1899, the first recipe that Émile was able to document was a jam that he created in the Strawberry Welcome Center. It comprised of sweet berries that were sold to by a trio of hunters at the town's butcher, some wild mint given to him freely by MaOhe, and lastly some oranges that were stolen off a passing fruit wagon by a mischievous deviant by the name of Rory Clementine.

That night, Émile and a group of adventurers (including Rory and Rosemary) traversed up the nearby snowy mountain and came upon what appeared to be the decaying remains of an infant beast that could only belong to The Wendigos. This recipe was eventually published into the first edition of The Odessa Times.

### Lakay La'Croc

On October 5th, 1899, Émile ran into his friend from the Bayou, Deepak. Following up on a promise they made when they first met, they journeyed together from Valentine to Deepak's camp in Lakay. Surrounded by the deep swamp & the humid air, the two shared stories over a stew that was made by Deepak the day before. It was a mix of Cajun spices, boar sausage, wild rice, swamp vegetation, and the quintessential ingredient to the stew - crocodile meat.

*[insert recipe here]*

The next morning, Émile wanted to document his own hunting of a crocodile for his cookbook. Armed with a rusty Cattleman Revolver and an abundance of nerves, he shot at a resting crocodile's backside in an attempt to slay it. As he emptied out the chamber of his gun, each shot missing more than the last, Deepak followed up with his weighty double-barreled shotgun and took out the two crocodiles that had begun to retaliate. Disappointed with his poor shooting, Émile skinned the animals and took several meaty cuts for his own creation of the Lakay La'Croc. The two traveled to Rhodes to sell the crocodile hides, thanked each other for their hospitality, and parted ways once more.