DATE: Sunday, November 9, 1997              TAG: 9711050038

SECTION: FLAVOR                  PAGE: F1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY M. F. ONDERDONK, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:  127 lines

BELGIUM AT THE BEACH CHEF BRINGS DISTINCT EUROPEAN FLAVOR TO BEACH RESTAURANT

ALAIN JACQMIN was 45 years old when he finally got around to the little matter of his resume. Of papers he had many - culinary diploma, passport, green card. But until a few weeks ago, never had a resume been necessary.

Some chefs are born to career paths. Some carve out career paths. Others have career paths thrust upon them. To the Belgian-born Jacqmin, life dished out option number three.

He needed never have done more than go on working in the kitchens of Villa Lorraine, an award-winning Michelin restaurant in Brussels, where he was sous chef for 17 years. After all, he had worked there a quarter of a lifetime. He might have been head chef eventually. But then, he might not have. The job of head chef was, after all, filled by the owner's 24-year-old son. And the boy wasn't going anywhere.

Instead along came Frank Spapen, a one-time countryman who happens to own a French restaurant in Virginia Beach.

``You have a cousin you never see?'' Spapen inquires, as he reminisces about that fateful trip to Belgium in 1990. ``Everyone has a cousin like that. I have a cousin like that. We met after many years at the funeral for one of our uncles. He told me his daughter was married to Alain Jacqmin. Jacqmin! I already knew him by name! I said - let me meet him!''

Over dinner in Brussels, Spapen invited Jacqmin to the States, to be guest chef at Le Chambord for a week in the summer of 1991. The following year the Jacqmins returned for another visit.

``I have friends that took them in a private plane and on a yacht,'' Spapen confides. ``They liked that.'' Spapen also promised that, if Jacqmin agreed to be chef at Le Chambord, he could eventually take over the business.

So - the move was inevitable perhaps.

But easy, it was not.

When they arrived on these shores in 1993, neither Alain, nor his wife, Martine, spoke English. Worse, the couple had left behind virtually everything and everyone they knew, to take up a new life in a land where people thought sweetbreads were little breakfast rolls with cinnamon on them.

``For two years I cried a little every day,'' recalls Martine, who now manages the four-year-old Bistro & Rotisserie, the casual adjunct to Le Chambord.

``I still miss Europe and my family.'' But, she adds, ``I love my job in the Bistro. I love it because I enjoy the people so much. They love my French accent!''

The people also now know and love sweetbreads - the thymus gland from a calf, and, when properly prepared, one of the world's top-rated gourmet delicacies. At least some of the people do.

Though still dominated by mainstream French favorites like vichyssoise, escargots and chateaubriand, the food at Le Chambord has, under Jacqmin's aegis, grown more complex and distinctly Belgian, sporting accents like celery root puree and braised endive.

Mussels, long a big-time favorite in Belgium - where one town even presents an annual award to the restaurant with the biggest pile of mussels shells outside its back door - are served in big copper pots in the Bistro, and have evolved into one of the eatery's most popular dishes.

Maybe sweetbreads and mussels don't always win out. But talent does.

I wanted to be a cook since I was very little. I cooked with my mother and her sister beginning when I was 10 years old,'' Jacqmin recalls.

In 1970, he graduated from culinary school in Brussels, then went on to four years as saucier for l'Escalier du Palais Royale, a seafood restaurant owned, like Villa Lorraine, by Belgian superstar chef Freddy Van Decasserie.

``You cannot eat one piece of meat in this restaurant,'' grins Jacqmin as he recalls the years at l'Escalier. ``I always needed to work in a fish restaurant before Villa Lorraine because there - I learned to work very fast.'' He rose to sous chef at l'Escalier, then moved into that post at Villa Lorraine.

``He is the best chef in the area,'' says Alvin Williams, Jacqmin's next-in-command and also an expatriate, who arrived on these shores a year or two after Jacqmin.

Williams, though, is an Englishman who hails from Leeds, via the London dining scene. ``In culinary school they teach you the basics,'' Williams explains. ``But Alain shows you how to - flair.''

And, getting back to the matter of Jacqmin's career path, flair is one thing that simply cannot be gleaned from a resume. Nor could one intimate Jacqmin's rugged northern European good looks. Or the gentle, countervailing smile. Or the frank way he has of renewing one's allegiance to culinary indiscretion - foie gras, celery root pureed with heavy cream, puff pastry.

Some of his specialties - sea bass in tomato concasse, for example - are sensible as well as superb. It is his game dishes, though, for which he is most renowned.

``His way with rabbit, quail and venison - paired with sauces, like cherry sauce,'' says Williams. ``Those are presentations that always make me stand back and - look.''

And it is game that has ultimately impelled the writing of Jacqmin's resume. Lured on by the prospect of a cook-off in New York and the grand prize of a trip to New Zealand, he recently entered a contest for venison cookery, sponsored by a New Zealand company. The chef submitted not one but two recipes as well as photo and resume.

Ah, the resume - necessary at last. One of the recipes calls for medallions of venison in bigaroon cherry and bordelaise sauces, with foie gras croutons. Do not try this at home.

``It is exciting,'' Jacqmin says. ``I like to try to make new recipes. People here like a lot to switch tastes,'' he wryly observes of the regular menu changes at Le Chambord. He also confesses a nostalgia for the way restaurants are provisioned in Europe, through great markets, such as the one he frequented in Paris.

Here, says Jacqmin, he can get whatever he needs - lately he has been working with several varieties of seaweed - but special products must often be ordered in advance.

Moreover, while he has found several restaurants in the area where he likes to dine - he names in particular the Lucky Star, Coastal Grill, Bistro 210, the Town Point Club and Ford's Colony - the prospect of going out to eat in this country generally inspires him with . . . nostalgia.

``We went to eat in Washington - very disappointing,'' he recalls of a recent trip he and Martine took to the nation's capital. ``It is always a problem - where to go to eat.''

Yet Jacqmin, with characteristic flair, is finding other things to savor - and what he likes about life in these United States might surprise those wont to sentimentalize the ways of the old country.

``In Europe, everybody looks mean,'' he says. ``Nobody smiles any more. Here in Virginia Beach it is very traditional. Everybody helps. Everybody is nice.

``That's the reason why I like it here.'' MEMO: M.F. Onderdonk is a freelance food writer in Urbanna, Ill. ILLUSTRATION: MOTOYA NAKAMURA color photos/The Virginian-Pilot

Alain Jacqmin...chef at Le Chambord in Virginia Beach

Venison Cervena KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY

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