Claude Pellerin, owner of ‘The French Lady’, a charming French restaurant in Birmingham, Michigan was born in Nord-Pas-de-Calais. Claude is well-versed in the diverse cuisines from her home country, and provides authentic tastes of France. Cooking, baking and entertaining are her passions and she prepares each meal from scratch with not just love and care, but with technique and expertise.
Claude is a classically trained harpist who has performed internationally, and had a musical career that spanned decades.
Talented and hardworking, Claude is selfless and goes out of her way to make people feel welcome, at home, and appreciated and holds herself, her food, and her restaurant to consistently high standards.
After spending some years of her twenties in Boston, she moved back to France, always knowing deep down that she wanted to be in the States.
Her menu has names of the women who crafted her cuisine: her grandmother Germaine, her mother Danièle, sisters Agnès and Estelle, and Lucie, and many more.
Taking pride in respecting tradition and family heirloom to the letter, Claude doesn’t shop in wholesale houses but prefers local stores and farms, choosing quality and love over profit and standardization.
Her biggest joy is in connecting with people.
Some insights from this episode:
- The French Lady is her brain child, her tribute to her grandmother. She didn't want any investor to come and tell her to make ‘burgers’, because that's what sells.
- She has no recipes in writing. They are all in her head. She sees a movie of her grandmother making it and just reaches out to the right ingredient when it's time to put it.
- She learnt patience from her mother and became a gifted chef because of her grandmother. You don't throw food, it's a sin. You transform leftovers into something else and create a feast with nothing because you don’t waste.
- She and her son complete each other, she brings tradition and he brings technique. They never want to work against each other, instead want to support each other.
- She hires for passion and attitude, not for skill and training, because then it will not be the Claude way and gets difficult and frustrating.
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