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♪ ♪ >> ANTHONY BOURDAIN: For the French, the rich waters off of Brittany have long provided inspiration, comfort, and even a source of income.

But perhaps their most esteemed contribution is seafood.

Chef Ludo heads to northwest France to cook with his mentor, Alain Passard, and explore the region with world renowned spice hunters the Roellingers.

He examines our symbiosis with the sea, and the gifts it bestows upon us mere mortals.

Enter the Mind of a Chef.

>> LEFEBVRE: Cooking is not just a recipe, it's instinct.

Don't need to use caviar.

Fried chicken is cool, too.

Mama will be proud of me.

(sniffs) ♪ ♪ >> LEFEBVRE: The first job for a chef is to go hunt for the best ingredients.

Then after is creativity.

The chef, without the good ingredients, we are nobody.

I like to cook with the ingredients from the ocean.

I love to eat seafood, and I love to cook with that.

I always want to go to Brittany.

I really want to go over there to see and to know why.

You know, why seafood is so good over there.

Everybody lives around the tide, you know?

Especially the fishermen.

Well, Jerome is a fisherman who catch lobster.

He never know exactly when to go fishing until he knows the tide.

Work 14 hours a day in cold water.

Sometimes he just sleeps three hours a night and goes back on the boat.

They have, like, 400 casier, lobster box, to check every day.

Empty the box, bring them back.

It's very, very physical work.

Sometimes they don't catch lobster.

Can you imagine?

>> LEFEBVRE: Best lobster in the world is really the Brittany lobster, no doubt.

Sometimes the blue is very dark.

Sometimes the blue is very light blue.

It's just a beautiful color.

But the most important is the taste.

You have this very, very specific taste.

You need to eat one to understand.

First time I really learned how to cook lobster, it was with Mr. Passard.

The specific technique, like lobster ramoneur.

Beautiful.

>> LEFEBVRE: When I was working with Mr. Passard, he was all about the school of fire, the flame-- how to control your flame, your heat.

>> LEFEBVRE: It's like a painter.

>> LEFEBVRE: Nothing changed with Mr. Passard.

He still has his own style, the same philosophy-- simple food, ingredients.

That is cooking.

Cooking is not just to follow a recipe.

It's instinct.

♪ ♪ When I was younger, I always wanted to work with Mr. Roellinger.

I was always very amazed by his philosophy of spice.

>> In Europe, we believe that when you use spices, we can use only once spice.

One spice.

It's completely wrong.

In any place in the world, it's always a blend.

It's like a perfume.

This house was built by spices merchant at the beginning of the 18th century.

I'm not a traveler, but I travel with all my spices.

You always need something strange, mysterious.

You don't know exactly what it is.

And finally, you accept in your food, in your mouth, in your stomach, something strange.

This is the story of this country.

Beginning of the 17th century, until the end of the 19th century, all the navigators like Jacques Cartier, like Duguay-Trouin, Mahé de la Bourdonnais, went to the West Indies and the East Indies.

And they carry all the spices in their ships.

So you can imagine all the smell, and everybody is waiting.

>> We say that we smell the boat before seeing it.

This wind, this salty wind blowing in your nose become hotter and spicier.

>> LEFEBVRE: You just feel this pleasure, because that, because the wind.

>> It's like a temper for the wind.

We say that the best lover of Brittany is the wind.

Because the wind is coming always from another place.

>> LEFEBVRE: I like the name, temper of the wind.

>> The target, the goal, is to find the taste of the wind.

>> LEFEBVRE: The Mont Saint-Michel Bay is a very special bay.

It's the one part of the world where you have much bigger tide.

It's about five kilometers.

And, of course, you find life everywhere.

And I see we have some artichoke here.

White fennel?

>> White fennel.

>> Salicornia.

When you have a very high tide, this part of the land is covered.

It's magic like the sea.

And six hours after, it's magic like desert.

>> LEFEBVRE: The noise of the shell, it's almost like walking in the snow.

It's a beautiful sound.

Whoa.

Didier is a clams fisherman.

They bring back, like, eight kilo of clams every morning.

The guy is a machine-- he's a machine.

>> LEFEBVRE: He's biting, guys.

>> LEFEBVRE: So okay, one more time.

>> LEFEBVRE: We're in the desert, and looking for gold.

But at least this one, we can eat it.

>> You know, you start by clear weather, like this one.

>> LEFEBVRE: Yeah.

>> And after one hour, it's completely foggy.

And you don't know exactly where is the land.

>> LEFEBVRE: It's a mystery.

>> You try... you walk back this way, back this way, and you have water here, and after here and here.

Very big problem.

>> LEFEBVRE: Yeah, wow.

>> Victor Hugo has written the water is coming back like a horse gallop, you know?

When you are on the Mont Saint-Michel Bay, between sky and the sea, you realize that you are just a little piece of sand.

Solitary.

It's a lot of humility when you go on this path of land.

It's the bottom of the sea.

About the flavor of clams like this one, in French we say queue de paon.

Means that when you put that in your mouth, you swallow, a few seconds after, you have another flavor.

And after maybe five minutes, you have all the way the taste of what you have swallowed before.

>> LEFEBVRE: Hmm, wow.

It's very well balanced.

>> You know, because seafood is cold, you need something warm.

You have to know that when you cook the sea.

>> LEFEBVRE: You know so much about spice.

How did you learn about spice like this?

Yoda of spice.

Like in Star Wars.

Obi-Wan.

Is the Obi-Wan of spice, Olivier.

>> Very often, in cuisine, we believe that the time is only necessary in the oven with a fire.

But infusion of air, spices, seaweed, anything, is so important.

It makes a lot of difference about taste and flavor.

We have about 1,200 little farmers in the world.

In India, Cambodia... >> LEFEBVRE: Cambodia, yeah.

>> Sri Lanka, Madagascar, and Mexico.

And Egypt.

We go and make the harvest with them, and see all the quality.

But if you don't know the people who make that, you can't say it's a good quality.

As the cuisinier, as the cook, we are just the last link of the chain.

This is veg bullion.

We are going to mix the spices of our story, of our culture, and also all the different herbs that we have collect this morning.

And also oysters, the kinds that you find in the sea here.

>> LEFEBVRE: I love the sound of the knife.

You know, it is a wind here.

It's really a magical place here.

That's all the local seaweed, huh?

>> Yes, all from here.

Especially wakame is one of the best of the world.

This is the herb we pick this morning.

>> LEFEBVRE: I never realized sea beans have so much water inside, never in my life.

>> The aster.

>> And to finish the bullion.

I will put dulse and wakame.

It will give to the bullion deep, salty flavor.

>> LEFEBVRE: Of the sea.

>> Of the sea.

>> LEFEBVRE: I really have more respect for all these farmers, these fishermen.

So much respect to see the way they just work hard for us, for everybody.

>> When you see a man like Didier on his knees like that, he's on the ground in the mud, and he catch the mud like that, every morning, it's so important to respect and to realize the value of the food.

So this is the spicy wind.

>> LEFEBVRE: Wow.

Bella Cancale.

>> It's the flavor of this country-- liquid wind.

>> Here, Ludo.

>> LEFEBVRE: Merci.

A lot of energy is bullion.

Energy of the wind, no?

>> LEFEBVRE: (stammering) >> Hmm?

>> LEFEBVRE: I don't know how to explain, but it's Cancale in the bowl.

It's the ingredients.

You need to come here to understand that.

It's very magical for me to visit Mr. Passard, listening to Mr. Roellinger and Hugo about what style of cooking you need to do.

You need to really get inspiration from where you are, so you open door for creativity and flavor.

It's good to go out of the kitchen sometime, and just to go to the source.

I miss that-- I miss the contact with nature.

It's exactly the way I learn how to cook.

(sniffs)