The anonymous chef behind the viral Instagram @ChefJacquesLaMerde revealed herself in Cambridge
Chef La Merde, who has more than 100,000 followers, pokes fun at foodie culture using elegantly plated junk food. And after Thursday’s party at Puritan and Company, her identity is no longer a mystery.
Chef Jacques La Merde, aka Christina Flynn, plating her short rib and Dorito creation.
The bags of Lay’s, Cheetos, and Doritos scattered across Puritan and Company’s long wooden tables set with porcelain plates and sleek flatware would have seemed strange any other night at the critically acclaimed Cambridge restaurant. But given that the reason for the sold-out dinner was to announce the identity of the Instagram celebrity Chef Jacques La Merde—an anonymous account with over 100,000 followers poking fun at the fussy, food-on-a-pedestal attitude surrounding our restaurant- and celebrity-chef-obsessed culture—it made perfect sense.
Patrons ate appetizers like gourmet pizza rolls and drank cocktails like the NeBROni (one of its ingredients was “a high five’’) while they waited for the first of six junk food-inspired courses to come out of the kitchen and for the big identity reveal. Many said that they assumed that the mysterious Chef Jacques was a man. (“Jacques’’ is a French male name, after all.)
But when the genius behind the collection of dishes involving components like Kraft Singles tuile, Franks RedHot fluid gel, and Doritos mayonnaise emerged from the kitchen fixing her ponytail, she had the last laugh.
“I thought it would be fun,’’ said Chef Jacques, aka Canadian chef Christina Flynn, when asked why she started the account. “I wanted to just have the most fun, I wanted to be a goofball, and I did it.’’
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Thursday’s dinner coincided with Flynn’s guest judge appearance and national reveal on Bravo’s Top Chef, in an episode where contestants were challenged to make a dish using junk food. And because Flynn has worked at restaurants in the area and is good friends with Puritan chef/owner Will Gilson, Alden & Harlow’s chef/owner Michael Scelfo, and Harvest’s executive pastry chef Brian Mercury, Boston seemed like the perfect place for Flynn’s coming out party.
“A few of us were all friends and had worked at the Nantucket Food and Wine Festival with Jacques La Merde,’’ said Gilson as he oversaw the plating of beef tartare burgers modeled after Big Macs, complete with a take on the special sauce. “We started emailing back and forth, and we were joking about how fun it’d be to do a dinner in Boston, and it sort of came about. This kind of event is the thing the food world is starting to transition to, into poking at the fancier stuff people are lauding at one time or another.’’
A beef tartare Big Mac.
Flynn, a classically trained chef, is currently doing research and development for a quick-serve, high-volume restaurant chain in Toronto, coming up mostly with salad recipes. Her work with healthy ingredients in part inspired the junk food-heavy account: “You can’t just eat kale all the time,’’ she said, “And you can’t just be serious all the time, either.’’
Flynn is definitely not serious all the time—her stories of imploding lobster tanks and a chef getting his eyebrows scorched off are evidence enough. But they can also be personal—including #ThrowbackThursday posts of Flynn as a young child.
“You can really tell from the account, most posts are real,’’ she said. “They’re about my relationships exploding or someone dropping a package in the sink. The only way I can deal with it is to have a sense of humor.’’
And yet, even the other chefs who contributed a dish to the six-course, junk-food inspired dinner honoring Chef La Merde (which literally translates to “The Shit’’) said they were taken aback when they first found out Flynn was behind the account.
“I think it’s awesome,’’ said Mercury before the dinner. “I’ve known for a little while, and I was very surprised. Not as far as talent level, and ability, and knowledge, and cleverness, and as person, just more like I had my own ideas of who it was.’’
The dinner—featuring a soundtrack Flynn put together consisting of Hall and Oates, Steve Winwood, and other 70s classics—was an exercise in creations that probably would’ve made your mother have a fit if she’d found you concocting them in the kitchen as a child. Gilson contributed sour cream and onion potato chip gnocchi, and Scelfo put together a take on McDonald’s Filet O’ Fish sandwich, consisting of cold smoked cod sitting atop a clothbound cheddar spread, accompanied by pickled vegetables (that anyone who’s eaten at Alden & Harlow would have recognized in a heartbeat). Flynn came up with a perfectly cooked piece of short rib that sat atop a Doritos sauce, served with Spam croquettes.
Alden & Harlow’s Michael Scelfo came up with a deconstructed take on McDonald’s Filet O’ Fish sandwich.
After the dinner, when asked whether she’s going to continue maintaining the account, Flynn shrugged.
“I don’t know, right now I’m excited to go see my mom,’’ she said, looking toward the back of the room where her mother, who flew in from rural Nova Scotia for the event, was seated. “I think she’s, like, tickled. But I feel good. I’m so happy to be a part of the event. I mean, it’s so many great people back there, and the music is so good!’’
Flynn laughed before taking the Jell-O shot she held in her hand. Then she went to find her mother, threading her way through the maze of tables, going mostly unnoticed.
Christina Flynn celebrating her identity reveal with a Jell-O shot.
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