Facing the camera, with a black cap on his head, he explains the origin of the recipe and the health benefits of the taboulé from Antioch revisited by him. Only the mask he wears around his neck reminds us that Algeria is facing the Covid-19 pandemic.
Because if the Mim, the restaurant of the M-Suite Hotel in Algerson has been closed to the public since March 21, the chef still takes orders from his stoves several times a week to save revenue for social networks. With its vegetables in salt crust, its adaptation of the taboulé of Antioch, seen by more than 400,000 people, Rabah Ourrad, is one of the stars of this period of Ramadan confinement.
At 43, the man is a star from London to Algiers. Algerian fans of cooking shows discovered him on the show “Master Chef Algeria” between 2016 and 2018. But in London, where he worked for the double star Ledbury and the famous Momo’s, he was already popular for having founded the Wormwood restaurant in Notting Hill in 2014. A place hailed by London’s food critics, including Dean Fay Maschler, bluntly believes that “Few chefs can compete with his CV”.
And for good reason. For rap fans, Rabah is above all Donquishoot, lyricist of the famous Algerian group MBS, created in the 1990s, whose first two albums sold 60,000 copies each, in an Algeria bruised by the violence of terrorism and counterterrorism. In 1998, he was 21 years old when after having signed a contract with Universal, the group left for Paris where a new album followed, a tour and a breach of contract.
Start again from the beggining
“Universal wanted us to sing in French”, laments the rapper, who prefers to break up. MBS then released two new albums in 2001 and 2005. But in the meantime, Rabah Ourrad, who had studied mechanical engineering at the University of Bab Ezzouar, this time obtained a license in French literature at the University of Paris 8 before, at the turn of an appointment at the National Employment Agency, to register in CAP cuisine.
Since his formation of Aubervilliers, he left to make his weapons in the big Parisian breweries then, while the Spanish chefs began to make people talk about them on the international scene, he went to Barcelona. If the language barrier prevents him from integrating great restaurants, he uses the experience to start from scratch, learn the basics of Catalan cuisine, Spanish and Catalan.
In 2009, another door opened thanks to his big brother, Mohamed, also a chef. And this time, here he is at Sketch, the restaurant of Frenchman Pierre Gagnaire, even if he has to go to London, agree to start again at the bottom of the kitchen scale. Rabah Ourrad does what he is used to: he goes for it, he works and he learns.
“I’m going towards what I like and obstacles don’t scare me”he said smiling. When he tells his story, he quotes his entrepreneur father “Who was not afraid to invest” and “Without mercy on studies” ; his mother “Illiterate who spoke in the form of poems” ; his eight sisters, whom he called to find out what spices to use when he found himself cooking alone when he arrived in Paris; his brother Meziane too, who left him “All his books” ; or his neighborhood, Hussein Dey, “Best school of life”.
“The desire to return to Algeria”
Rabah Ourrad also seems to know how to take blows. Like the racism he undergoes in the kitchen. Its philosophy is pragmatic: “Learn not to take things personally and to love people. “
So when Meriem and Hamza Bisker, the founders of the M-Suite hotel, contacted him to take over the management of their restaurant, Rabah Ourrad, now the father of a young girl, had already approached Algiers for the needs of filming. of “Master Chef”, but he doesn’t live there yet. Quickly, he finally lets himself be convinced: “I felt the urge to return to Algeria, to regain my childhood and adolescence. Everywhere, I applied myself to learn. But what I knew the least was myself, my country, my cuisine. “
Even today, he says he dreams of better mastering the cuisines of the different regions of Algeria, revisiting the recipes thanks to “Existing creativity protocols”, dig up “The pearls that have been lost” and make it into a book. Learn, always more. This is how he approaches life. “I became a chef, not because I did things in the kitchen, but because I was interested in products”, he analyzes.
Rabah Ourrad speaks quickly. He has these language tics of people who master several languages perfectly. The chef quotes Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Averroes, Balzac, explains that he takes advantage of the confinement to learn Italian and gives, on the phone, editing advice to a collaborator between two questions.
At Mim, he now supervises a dozen young people: “What I missed when I was younger was a role model who could feed my neurons. “ He tries, between two techniques, to approach philosophy, science and art. He didn’t put the music aside. This year, he is releasing a new rap album as well as an acoustic album, recorded with Spanish musician friends. He will be called Mouqawama (resistance).
