When we meet her, Lily-Rose Martens seems assured and confident in her abilities.
And yet, the journey of this promising cook was strewn with pitfalls.
Flashback to college years.
“I was someone who was very invested in school… a little too much!
“, she remembers.
“I put monumental pressure on myself to get good grades and good results.”
Until he broke down and dropped out of school completely.
“At first it was a few days.
Afterwards, my doctor stopped me.
And I saw a psychologist for almost 2 years.
We tried to sort it out.
He explained to me that I was too hard, and after a while, it gave out,” she sighs.
Away from the classroom, Lily-Rose tries to hold on to the last thread that links her to schooling.
“I started again, I changed establishments… I almost repeated a year because I hadn't gone to class for more than a year and a half.
I took my Brevet in a separate room.
My entire second year, I did it with a few distance learning courses, and not in all subjects.
The teachers were not necessarily in favor of validating my year.”
The young girl and her family insist, with the support of the psychologist.
Winning support: “I started again in first grade and it went very well.
I had good results, I worked, but without putting too much pressure on myself.”
Baccalaureate in hand, we nevertheless had to set goals for the future.
“I didn’t know what to do at all,” Lily-Rose remembers.
“I had a lot of meetings with teachers, who tried to advise me, but I didn't get it at all!
".
However, there remained cooking, a passion that the family seems to have in the blood: “My father is a pastry chef, I often saw him cooking… Is there a link?
I’ve always loved cooking for fun.”
Cooking, a family vocation
Lily-Rose Martens goes with her parents to the Yonne Interprofessional Apprentice Training Center in Auxerre.
The family is won over by the quality of the facilities and the rigor of the learning.
“It was like a dream,” remembers the young apprentice.
Thanks to her baccalaureate, she passed her CAP in one year with only professional subjects.
“I did twice as much practice,” she says happily.
“It was there that I learned most of the things I know how to do today.
And it also allowed me to gain confidence in myself.
» At the same time, Lily-Rose is doing her apprenticeship at Midi O Halles, the Trojan restaurant whose kitchens are managed by her father.
“At the beginning, I was a little apprehensive, I think he was too, but we are very close, very close.
And as we have a common passion, it brought us together more than created tension,” smiles the apprentice.
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At the end of the diploma, Lily-Rose is invited to participate in the competition for the Best Apprentice Chef in France.
With the careful advice of Gilles André, a friend of her father and chef of the Trojan gastronomic restaurant “Le Valentino”, she brilliantly won the departmental final, then the regional final for Burgundy-Franche-Comté, thanks to the quality of the menus created.
Subjects known in advance, which allows them to be worked on in advance.
The final ?
“4h30 of preparation”, underlines the young woman.
As a starter, “A field endive with a Bavarian cheese with Gouda from Touraine, a hazelnut coulis and an endive juice.
Then for the main course, a roast pike perch steak with a crispy pike perch mousse, a pôchouse of pike… and dessert, a lemon meringue tart with mint gel.”
“I have never learned so much”
What made the difference for the final victory?
“Many aspects come into play: Techniques, execution, waste sorting, and even the way of doing things, the way of being.
Without forgetting the taste,” says Lily-Rose.
“I have never learned as much in the last 6 months as during the competition.”
Vincent Martens, both father and teacher, says he is doubly proud of his daughter.
The recipe for success?
“Work and will!
» replies the chef of Midi O Halles.
“You never get there alone.
We need to know how to surround ourselves with people who advise us.”
An enriching experience which still gives the young cook an appetite for learning, currently in additional studies in “restaurant desserts”, still at CIFA de l'Yonne.
A journey which is a beautiful message of hope according to his father.
“For parents of children who have problems at school or who are burned out, we have to tell ourselves that this is a bad time... We have to help them, support them, and one day they can bounce back and go to the top!
".