Embark on a gastronomic voyage with Ariane Daguin, the force behind D'Artagnan, as she recounts her mission to redefine the American palate with a touch of Gascon finesse. Ariane's tale is more than a story of culinary prowess; it's a testament to her undying commitment to the art of meat and poultry, from her Gascon roots to the tables of America's finest establishments. As she narrates the challenges of scaling an ethical business, we're reminded of the sheer resilience required to maintain quality amidst growth and the upheavals of a pandemic that reshaped the restaurant landscape.
Thank you Ariane!!
https://www.alloneoneall.org/
https://www.dartagnan.com/chef-ariane-daguin.html
Thank you to our listeners!!
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We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host, guest or the management. All right reserved under Chef Sense Podcast and Chef Massey, LLC.
Embark on a gastronomic voyage with Ariane Daguin, the force behind D'Artagnan, as she recounts her mission to redefine the American palate with a touch of Gascon finesse. Ariane's tale is more than a story of culinary prowess; it's a testament to her undying commitment to the art of meat and poultry, from her Gascon roots to the tables of America's finest establishments. As she narrates the challenges of scaling an ethical business, we're reminded of the sheer resilience required to maintain quality amidst growth and the upheavals of a pandemic that reshaped the restaurant landscape.
Thank you Ariane!!
https://www.alloneoneall.org/
https://www.dartagnan.com/chef-ariane-daguin.html
Thank you to our listeners!!
Contact & More Info:
https:/www.chefmassey.com
https://www.instagram.com/chef_massey/
Other Sponsors & Discount Programs:
https://www.chefmassey.com/services-9
Studio Recording & Editing Support:
Intro/Outro Creator
https://www.jacksonwhalan.com/
Podcast Disclaimer:
We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice. The views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host, guest or the management. All right reserved under Chef Sense Podcast and Chef Massey, LLC.
Hey everyone, welcome to Chef Sense. I'm your host, Chef Massey. Okay, so today on the podcast, what a privilege to have Ariane Digging here from D'Artagnan. Thank you for joining us. No, thank you. Thank you, James, Having you on Chef Sense. You're such a pillar in our country and, you know, coming in in 1985, and just harnessing and being a huge part of that change. I'm excited for you to share that with all of us.
Ariane:All right.
Chef James:I'm blushing. First of all. Well, I'll take that as a huge compliment. Can you share with us just your lineage and your journey and some things you faced over 36?, 37 years, 37 years, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ariane:Okay, well, here we go. So I'm from Gascogne, southwest France, a long, long lineage of people in the food business or agriculture farmers, seven generations behind me. The latest one, my father, was a restaurateur and chef, had two Michelin stars in Hoche, a small town in the heart of Gascony, capital of Gascony, where all the three musketeers came from, where D'Artagnan came from, and my father was very, very proud of his heritage and also the whole family. And growing up in that and being born and growing up in that hotel restaurant, I saw how he was functioning, which basically was farmers or hunters or fishermen coming with products that were very fresh, proposing to him stuff and him working with basically all the products seasonal, of the region, local and nothing else. And this builds your palate, it does build your nutrition sense and I didn't know any other way. I didn't know that you could factory farm beef in Texas to make hamburgers. I didn't know all those things. I didn't know you could factory farm beef in Texas to make hamburgers. I didn't know all those things. I didn't know you could factory farm chickens. There were no factory farm chicken in Gascogne when I grew up. All the chickens were outside picking on insects all over the place around the farm the goose and the ducks for foie gras, a couple of pigs for the charcuterie, where we would kill a pig once a year with the cousins and have all the charcuterie in the world. And that's how I grew up.
Ariane:So when I came here and I tasted the first time I tasted the chicken here in 1978 as a student, I was horrified. I wasn't even sure I could stay in this country where the chicken tasted like fish, you know, and was so mushy and so falling apart. It was, ah, what's happening? Where am I? You know what happened. And so I finished my study. Actually, I didn't finish my studies. I dropped out because I ran out of money from Barnard College, columbia University, and I ended up at the Three Little Pigs.
Ariane:The Three Little Pigs were the first charcuterie salumeria in French, in New York. I stayed with them for four years and one day arrived a couple of guys with a foie gras, that fat liver from the duck and the goose. And, to make it short, my bosses at the Three Little Pigs didn't want to go into that business, but to me it was really going back to. I hadn't tasted foie gras since I had left france and gasconia. I was missing it and I saw a historic moment in america where it was the first foie gras grown from ducks in america. It did not exist for that. So I said I need to be involved in this and and that's how I left the Three Little Pigs and, with a partner, started my own company, tartagnan.
Ariane:And immediately we saw that we couldn't just survive on the foie gras and the duck parts that go with the foie gras and the whole duck. That was not enough to make a company. So we immediately went to source good chicken from Amish farmers who were raising them the right way, and quail and rabbit and venison and bison. And so we started to be specialized like that in specialty poultry, specialty meats. And immediately in 1985, immediately, all those young chefs who were coming out of FCI you know, the French Culinary Institute, johnson, wales, cia, peter Kemp, that became ICE, later Cornell all those young chefs who were traveling to Europe and coming back, they wanted, they were looking for that kind of a product.
Ariane:They wanted to be glorified the dishwasher from the basement of a restaurant. They wanted to have good stuff on their menu, and so the timing was we were very lucky, the timing was perfect and they were, and today still are, our main customers, and they are the ones who pushed us to make it better and better, to get the chicken to be air-chilled instead of water-chilled, to have more and more pasture space, to have a heritage breed instead of a commercial breed. And with the years we got better and better and pushed by our clients to do that, and so we created a relationship of more than friendship with those chefs and extreme respect. I mean all of what they were doing with our products, what they are doing with our products.
Ariane:And they totally respected the fact that we might grow a little slower than other distributors, other sourcing entities, but that we were doing it the right way, without compromise. And that's how, in the last 37 years, 38 years, tartagnan has been growing slowly, at the pace, without compromise. When we need more chickens, we add a farmer to the group.
Ariane:We don't ask the existing farmers to go over their capacities and that's how we ended up at the beginning of COVID. Covid was an enormous crisis for me. It was at the time I was alone. You know, I had bought out my partner several, several years ago before that and COVID was the biggest crisis in my life, seriously, I mean, every day there was a different. You have to realize. March 15, all our customers, the chefs, just closed down, so we didn't have any more customers and the money that they owed us for 30 days before was not paid. So the pressure was tremendous. Wow, thank God, the retail stores were asking for products because everybody was cooking at home and we were able to develop our website really, really big, because people were cooking at home and they became more adventurous.
Ariane:They were trying to try the quail and the rabbit and the duck at home that they had tasted previously and that they were missing from the restaurant scene that was closed. So that's what allowed us to stay alive and to keep all the employees and not to leave anybody. And then, at the end of the COVID, I think it was time to sell. I was tired I hadn't slept for four years basically because it was a very, very tense period. We came out of it really, really well and flourishing, because our website multiplied by 10, our retail sales multiplied by five, and then the restaurants came back. So we were in a very, very good position. But I was afraid of COVID number two. You know okay another, run another crisis would come.
Ariane:I could not face it. It was too much yeah and so that's when I decided to sell and I sold the company and today I'm. I helped my daughter. My daughter started the foundation, the farm in goshen, new york oh great, it's a couple of ways north-northwest of New York City.
Chef James:Okay.
Ariane:It's called All for One, one for All Farm. That's awesome, yeah. And there we have 14 acres and we do silvopasture rotation of the animals, the mammals, the poultry, we have bees, we have donkeys, we have a little farm cafe, we do distillery. We do have our distillery license.
Chef James:Oh.
Ariane:In every fruit that we grow, every plant that we grow.
Ariane:And at the farm cafe we cook. It's very egg based, because we have a lot of very, very good eggs from our chickens, but also salads and soups and sandwiches, little creme, caramel, and we that's how we use all the products of the farm and we are open to the public every weekend. So Friday, saturday, sunday, people come experience the farm. They do a workshop or two, or they don't. They just walk around and see how things are being raised the right way and they taste it at the farm stand, the cafe. They taste it and they taste our food and I love it and this is my new life.
Chef James:That is really awesome. I mean so, you know it's full circle You're going right back to being right into it again. That's so awesome. I mean so, you know it's full circle You're going right back to being right into it again. That's so awesome, wow.
Ariane:And it's also very rewarding because I actually see the people enjoying the food. That's the one thing that I was missing a little bit at D'Artagnan, where I would sell to the chefs. The chefs would give me feedback and that was very rewarding, Yep, but I didn't see the end result. I didn't see like my father when I grew up, like my father at the restaurant would. After cooking he would come down in the dining room and talk to people and to have the comments, to have the happiness in people, people.
Chef James:This is why we're cooking yeah happiness, so well, and I think the amazing thing is is it really is special how and how important an upbringing is for a child. Coming up and being surrounded by that you know, especially working and seeing your father. What were your memories like with that? I mean that I mean you're talking about a very talented, amazing chef.
Ariane:It was. It was a youth. That was really fun, you know, we on one side he, my, my brother is a year younger, and then my little sister is seven years younger.
Ariane:So I was closer to my brother and we would do all the mischievous things together. You take your bicycle and 15 minutes later you're totally in the countryside goofing around In the family business. It was a small family business, a small hotel, restaurant, 27 rooms. So you have to help. You know, when it's vacation or after homework, you have to help one way or another.
Ariane:All my youth, my brother, it was very clear that my brother had a kind of like an internship plan. You know, he was the desserts, the mise en place, the roasting, the. I was helping wherever was needed. It was very clear never said, but very clear that one day he was going to take over, not me. I think it's something that we never talked about. I didn't.
Ariane:I don't think I resented at the time this is, it was normal. You know, the girls would marry and follow the husband and so it's the boys who would keep the business. That was a logical thing at that time, which has changed a lot since then, but somewhere, I think this is what built me. This is why I, somewhere, I decided to leave and to go to America. This is why I wanted to show my worth. This is what drove me to succeed and to do something meaningful and to have a business that was sustainable and profitable. But to go back to the youth, it was fun. This is how I learned how to pluck a duck and cut it up, and maybe the chicken and make confit and make foie gras with my grandmother in the jars in the courtyard After school at five o'clock with my friends we would come and raid the garde manger, you know, and we would take some saucisson hanging there and the good blob of butter and the good country bread and we would snack.
Chef James:Oh, that's amazing.
Ariane:No, it was a good time. Yeah, yeah.
Chef James:There's so many reasons why you're important to me, but like looking at really the pioneer opportunity that I feel like that you had in our country and I do want to just make a brief mention to, you know, Judy Prince, and I know I shared from JB Prince her coming into New York City in 1977 and a very challenging time, you know and saying, well, they, the chefs over in Europe, have all of these things. There's something lacking here in the United States. I mean I'm very proud of all of our chefs and the many things that we've really had to catch up with as we pass the baton between each other. But to have amazing people like you all have this aha moment, but take your heritage and package that into a business to do what you envision and believe in, but really have a renaissance or a changing movement in our country. I mean you're a part of that. You're huge in that, you know. Thank you.
Ariane:Thank you and I take the compliment and I accept it happily. You know I'm proud. On the other side, I did not invent anything. I just what I learned in my youth and in my roots and I brought it here. One example is the green circle chicken Green circle chicken of D'Artagnan. It's a chicken that actually eats scraps of vegetables at the end, that has a lot of room to roam around whether it's summer or winter also, and when it's processed, it's processed not with dirty ice water but cooled by air so that it doesn't soak in dirty chlorine. It actually concentrates the taste because it's cooled by a wind, a very cold, uh wind and it makes for the best chicken possible and all the best restaurants in america have our chickens today, and so I'm very proud of it. This is our red circle chicken. On the other side, I did not invent it. This is something that was in rural France all along when I was growing up.
Chef James:I'm throwing out the fact that, before the FDA allowed or organic was placed on labeling, that was a part of just what you did. Yeah, this wasn't.
Ariane:You waited for no one, but that's why I think that's why our client of choice was the chefs, the professional chefs, because they had an education about that. In retail it was much more difficult because we ended up with a chicken that was 25, 30 percent more expensive than the next chicken and no way on the label to be able to explain why that chicken was more expensive than the other. So for a chef, when they look at my chicken they don't. They taste it, of course, but they don't even have to taste it to understand it's a better chicken. Just by the COVID, you know the dryness etc. But in a retail store with clients who have not been educated that way and who are very price conscious not been educated that way and who are very price conscious, it was a big challenge. So retail came much later and actually COVID helped on the retail.
Chef James:Well, and that was huge too, because a lot of our local farms here got a very, very hard shot in the arm, a boost. People were at home and you know, yes, there were people that probably had income. Was was different than when they were working. You know, I don't want to, I mean expendable income, but just like they were, they were able to investigate and educate themselves on even like this birth of sourdough bread. You know, like people doing that at home, probably for the first time since maybe even the founding of the country, because it wasn't, you know, there wasn't a lot of bread then either but like there's this whole process where, you know, the local farms took off, and I think that's really says a lot to as an entrepreneur.
Chef James:It's like you know the local farms took off and I think that's really says a lot too as an entrepreneur. It's like you see it. It's like let's move into the retail or, you know, the e-commerce situation, because we've got to keep moving, you know, and as you went along with developing your company, were there any like? I know you mentioned your challenges of COVID, but being a lady entrepreneur and stepping into this, did you find, you know, being in a higher male dominated industry, that there was any bumps or roadblocks for you or any struggles of the other sort.
Ariane:I can't really say that. You know, you have to realize one. I have this very strong French accent that I could never get rid of, and so for some reason in America, when you have a French accent, you have that prejudice that comes with it, which you probably know better about food than the person who doesn't have your accent. So I was advantaged by that.
Chef James:You know that was really Number two.
Ariane:I'm tall, I'm six foot. I'm not thin, you know. I'm solid, I'm big, and so I don't have any problems of respect. And so the chefs in the kitchens we were talking the same language I, I didn't. I never had this and I never saw. Also, um, I always kept my relationship super professional. My clients were my clients they became friends.
Ariane:We were, we had a very deep friendship. We still have huge friendships going on, but I never saw sexual tension, if you want, between the chefs and I. It was very and it was not difficult to keep it that way, you know, to keep it super professional. We're talking about the products, professional, we're talking about the products. We're talking about the animal husbandry. We're talking about the menu. We're talking about ideas for the menu and then when we come from, we can talk about I don't know the, the football, football game or something, but never, never, any. Um, there was no condensing. I don't have one example of a problem because I was a woman.
Chef James:Yeah, no, that's wonderful. Yeah, that says a lot. I mean that's wonderful to hear. Yeah, I just thought I would throw it out during the timeframes of you know coming along if that ever occurred. But as you developed, were there challenges in kind of networking these farms and getting these small farms on board.
Ariane:Yeah, yeah, yeah At the beginning we went to the low hanging fruit, and that's the Amish community, amish community in Pennsylvania, amish community in Indiana. In Pennsylvania, amish community in Indiana. The Amish have the same philosophy, basically, which is that they were given this property, they were given these animals, they were given whatever they had there and their, their mission in life was to give it to the next generation in better shape than what they were given. And so, because of that, they, we, we do have the same philosophy of respecting the animals and, um, raising them without stress and the right way, basically, no medication, no stress, plenty of space, respect for, uh, the animals. And so, because of that, it was not that difficult to convince them, because they were already doing it for themselves. Okay, that animal husbandry, other species. It was more difficult, you know, to convince the first rancher to do only grass-fed and no hormones and no antibiotics. Right, that was much more difficult. We grew little by little.
Ariane:It was easier with poultry and game burns first and then meat, and then finally we went into meat when we had enough of a span and a volume potential to interest people like that. So it was by stage. But at the beginning, yes, farmers were looking at us like crazy. I remember in North Carolina the quail farmer, bill Odom, when I went to see him, first of all he invited me to lunch in a place where it was dry county. So when I asked for a glass of wine, everybody looked at me like. And then when I said, ok, I would like your quail they look like nice quail, but I want them fresh. I don't want them frozen, because at the time he was selling them just frozen to people and so he had to change his whole process in the house so that I could get them fresh and the freshest possible.
Ariane:And you, you do need to establish serious loyalty ties and partnership before you can have something like that. Because they didn't know us, we were just starting, how much volume were we going to make? Was it worth it? So it was very difficult to convince the first farmers. And then, after a while, when people saw, when farmers and ranchers saw that when we said something we would do it, when we said, hey, you raise that many, we will buy them. You raise them this way and we will buy them at the right price and on time. And when they saw that we were doing that, then all of a sudden it became much easier and we had farmers knocking at the door. That was not the problem, wow. And the bottleneck was, and always is today, the slaughterhouse.
Chef James:Okay.
Ariane:There are no more slaughterhouses that are at the human scale. You know that are at a scale for companies like D'Artagnan. Wow, small slaughterhouses close every day and the big slaughterhouses become bigger and bigger. And so, as a slaughterhouse is bigger and belong to one of the big five companies, they tend to refuse heritage animals because they are of a different morph companies. They tend to refuse heritage animals because they are of a different morphology, like Berkshire pork, for example.
Ariane:It's bigger than the regular pork, it's stuck. So in order to process them, you need to stop the whole chain, you need to change the size of the hook and then you need to start again. That's 20 minutes that 1,000 employees are idle. That's a lot of money, and so it becomes more and more difficult to find places to process animals. And I think people are starting to realize. The usda is starting to realize the universities that have um agricultural departments are starting to realize that this is bad for the community and the um uh and the safety of food, because when you have something like COVID in a huge place like that, you have COVID, you close and then you cannot feed people anymore, right?
Ariane:So it's very important to encourage middle-sized and small slaughterhouses to come back and we've been working closely with farms bureau from the usd and with places like cornell, to redevelop that kind of a slaughterhouse or even mobile slaughterhouse that can go guys and and and kill in the fields yeah, yeah, wow, okay, interesting.
Chef James:well, and the other thing is too. You know, you've you've dealt with poultry and charcuterie and mushrooms, and now we're D'Artagnan has gone into to seafood, right.
Ariane:So that's after me, that's after I sold the company. I sold the company to Fortune. Ok, it's a company that has been doing in fish what D'Artagnan has been doing in meat, and so we complete each other very well, and so Fortune is now at the end of being able to integrate the two companies and to start having fish and seafood that are of the same caliber than our meats.
Chef James:Okay, oh, very nice. Okay, wow, any chefs you know over your time that you know inspired you or you developed a relationship or any memories with that?
Ariane:They helped us a lot. So you had the whole French community, you know Jean-Louis Paladin, michel Richard, but then you had the whole French community. You know Jean-Louis Paladin, michel, richard, yeah. But then you had the younger ones who are now the seniors, like Daniel, jean-georges, eric Ripper. And then you had the first Americans David Burke, charlie Palmer. You had Julia Child, who helped us a lot. She took me back.
Chef James:I was going to ask you she introduced me to everybody.
Ariane:She was great.
Chef James:Wow, how was that working with her?
Ariane:She was bigger than life. I mean, she goes into a room, first of all, she was even taller than me and bigger than me, but she would go in the room and the room would go silent. You know, she had this charisma and she was extremely respected by chefs. So when we, when I would go to Boston, for example, or Los Angeles, and she was there, she would introduce me to two people and immediately the door was opening for me, because it was really something, you know, to be introduced by Julia Child. That meant something.
Chef James:Wow, that's so great. You know, and again, that's where I think with your legacy of D'Artagnan you've touched. You know so many people in our industry, so you know, thank you for all of that hard work. Know so many people in our industry, so you know, thank you for all of that hard work as you have transitioned. I mean, and looking back on that, any advice like entrepreneurial advice you would give somebody today just starting their own thing or looking into the industry, any thoughts?
Ariane:So I think we have today. We have a planet that is in bad health. If you do start a business, please be conscious of that and try to do your small part. I'm more and more flagabasted. I don't know, but every time I go and see a menu where in the middle of the winter, you have something strawberry with fresh strawberries yes you have the burrata with a fresh tomato.
Ariane:Come on, guys. You know there are ways to do during the season. You can make a jam with the strawberries, you can pickles, you can make sun-dried tomatoes, you can make a sauce with tomatoes 10 000 ways to keep the tomato for the winter, but not fresh. Don't put fresh out of season on your menus, because you know that that that produce, in order to come here, had to travel thousands and thousands of miles or had to be raised inside with heat, which means energy, which means depleting the earth of the energy once again, and nutritionally and taste-wise it's not the same anyway. So it's so easy to refrain from using products that are out of season. Just don't put products that are out of season on your menu. It's not that complicated.
Chef James:No.
Ariane:No, it really isn't.
Chef James:You know it's the first step. Yeah, you know, and I think, as a chef too, I take it as a constructive, positive challenge to use product you know and use what's in within the season. I think that that message, you know, is something that's so important to place on that menu. But no, that's such an important piece. So, wow, okay, I really really enjoyed the opportunity, you know, to talk to you and connect over all this I really hope that you come very soon and visit us at the.
Ariane:Yeah, all for one, one for all.
Chef James:We also call it a o o a, that is yeah, that's very musketeer like yeah, yeah, it's in, gos New York.
Ariane:We open every weekend.
Chef James:Okay.
Ariane:Please come and eat us.
Chef James:I would love to.
Ariane:And have a taste of our eggs and fresh salad.
Chef James:I could only imagine it would probably be a memory of a lifetime. So everyone that's listening again, if you get that amazing opportunity, do you have a website for the farm at all?
Ariane:Yes, it's all110.org. Okay. Great, also because it's a foundation.
Chef James:Okay, great, all right, and I'll put those links also in the show notes as well for everyone. Great, so that'll be great Well, ariane, thank you so much for your time and everything you've done in our industry. You're amazing. Congratulations on this new venture.
Ariane:Thank you and thank you very much for this. This is awesome.
Chef James:My pleasure. Yeah, all right, everyone. That is a wrap. You can check us out if you like that. Subscribe Also the Instagram Chef Massey. Let's keep it simple, Chef Massey. Let's keep it simple, chefmasseycom. Have a good one. Bye for now.