With his frizzed-out hair and flamboyant air, Gerald Passedat resembles a rock star or perhaps an artist. He's a bit of both, although his home is in the kitchen.

Passedat rules Le Petit Nice, a Michelin two-star restaurant on the Marseille coast, where he specialises in simply but creatively prepared seafood. He was recently in Bangkok, although only by satellite connection, to discuss his cooking and his March 21-25 stint at the Plaza Athenee Bangkok.

"I found my way of cooking only about seven years ago," says the middle-aged Passedat, speaking from a TV screen suspended in the Plaza Athenee's Reflexions restaurant. "Before I was cooking, but I didn't know what I intended to do."

Actually, he knew exactly what he wanted to do - capitalise on the bounty of southern France, its fresh seafood, flavourful vegetables and abundance of herbs. But he didn't know how to put his mark on one of the world's most beloved cuisines. He says the recent explosion of creative cooking from Spain and elsewhere in Europe helped him push his personal boundaries.

"Southern France has for a long time used tomatoes, olive oil and lemons. I've found a way to bring them up to date," says Passedat, who has been running Le Petit Nice's kitchen since 1985. His father, Jean-Paul, won the restaurant's first Michelin star in 1979 and its second in 1981. His grandfather, Germain, purchased the Villa Corinthe on the Mediterranean Sea and turned it into Le Petit Nice, a hotel and restaurant, in 1917.

"Fish are at the heart of my cooking," Passedat says. "Forgotten fish - the tub gurnard and red scorpion fish - and the modest fish - gielle, scad and the scabbard - share the spotlight [on my menu] with shellfish."

Today, common varieties of seafood dominate the menus at most restaurants, he says, depriving diners of a diversity of tastes and textures. And their preparation is often classical, ignoring culinary and nutritional trends.

Among the dishes he'll prepare for his Bangkok tasting menu are sea scallop bits with carrot foam, sea urchin coral on an "iodine bed" with spiced angler fish, Brittany lobster with clarified ginger and lemongrass foam, and roasted crab with pepper and cacao. Venturing ashore, he'll pair foie gras with pineapple, cloves, Sichuan pepper, vanilla beans and white pepper.

This is daring stuff. And in Bangkok, he'll be using a host of additional, unheralded ingredients - from macadamia nuts to kumbawa - and occasionally employ molecular-cuisine techniques, such as vacuum-pack steaming.

Molecular cuisine is just a term, he says. Chefs are simply trying to improve food through science.

In France, Passedat is dehydrating foods and turning them into powders to intensify their flavours. He's using low-heat immersion technique to prepare foods without fat and retain their essence. And he's spinning stocks in centrifuges to concentrate their taste.

But while he's experimenting in the kitchen, his focus remains on freshness and unadulterated flavours.

"A dish should happen naturally," he says. My food is "simple, pared-down cooking with a loving respect for nature".

As a child, Passedat wanted to be an actor. But he fell in love with cooking watching his father and his grandmother in the kitchen. As a young teen, his father took him to France's greatest restaurants to develop his palate.

He attended hotel school and worked in several kitchens, including Pierre and Michel Troisgros' La Maison Troisgros in Roanne and Michel Guerard's Les Pres d'Eugenie in Landes.

"I've always been a passionate and rebellious cook," he says. "I had to free myself from the shackles of tradition." It was the Brothers Troisgros who taught him to simplify dishes and it's the new wave of cooking that's sweeping the continent that has given him the courage to find his "artistic approach" to southern France's cuisine.

Passedat will prepare a private Chaine des Rotisseur's dinner on Tuesday and a Baron Philippe de Rothschild dinner featuring seven wines (including Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1996) on March 23 (Bt5,900++).

He will serve a seven-course tasting menu on March 22, 24 and 25 (Bt5,500++), along with a la carte selections. Passedat will also lead a two-hour cooking class (Bt2,900++) at 10am on March 22, followed by a four-course lunch. All meals are at Reflexions in the Plaza Athenee.

Call (02) 650 8800, extension 4338, for information and reservations.

Hal Lipper

The Nation