Mathieu Ciarlet — “I No Longer Work, I Live Happiness”

Paris, August 2026. In a small restaurant in the Marais, the photographer Erick photographed a cook and listened to him tell the story of how he had come this far.

Mathieu Ciarlet became a cook at fifty.

In a narrow street of the Marais, in Paris’s 4th arrondissement, near the Centre Pompidou, there is a small restaurant of about twenty seats: C’est Comme à la Maison, “just like home.” He opened it in March 2022, and he is still the one at the stove.

His Grandmother’s Kitchen

He discovered cooking at around twelve. At his grandmother’s side he learned the traditional recipes of French regional cooking. He handled the rolling pin and learned to cut the vegetables his grandfather grew in the garden. He went to the farm for fresh eggs and came back with a freshly plucked chicken. Watching over the cooking, judging the seasoning, tasting, eating with the pleasure of a homemade meal: the boy’s path was already chosen.

“Me, Mathieu, I’ll be a cook!”

At thirteen, he told his parents he wanted to start an apprenticeship as a cook. They told him to “get your baccalauréat first.” And that, in any case, he was destined to become an engineer.

The Path Imposed

He went along with those choices. His studies in computing, in his own words, “led nowhere.” Yet he made it his career for more than twenty-five years. He started as a simple repair technician and ended as head of a team of engineers, working along the way as a buyer and as quality manager.

“…slowly but surely acquiring the abilities that have built who I am today.”

His passion for cooking stayed in everyday cooking. He baked his own bread and simmered dishes for evenings with friends. He also found a consuming passion for Japanese cuisine, especially the world of raw fish, which he explored “until I’d had my fill”: the art of cooking rice, respect for the product and its freshness, “the precision of the cut through the efficient, repeated gesture.”

Approaching Fifty

For years he found no happiness in his work. As fifty approached, he was buried under boredom and the bleakest lack of motivation. His health was poor. His only daily pleasure was eating in restaurants.

“The prospect of having to survive in this state until retirement led me to question my life, and its usefulness, deeply.”

Then came the COVID crisis. Working from home and cooking every day, he felt his childhood dream resurface. It became clear that he had to try to make it real.

“And if I was going to become a cook, it was immediately obvious that I had to follow my dream all the way, by creating my own restaurant!”

What Those Close to Him Already Knew

When he told the people close to him about the project, everyone took it as something obvious.

“Everyone had felt in me this love, this passion for good food, and […] sharing these emotions, these moments of sharing, was simply what makes me who I am!”

Around a Dish, a Glass, a Moment

What matters most to him now is the deep feeling of fulfilling a mission every day.

“To live this love of sharing and welcoming, around a dish, a glass, a moment.”

He describes his life as “a contrasted paradox of sacrifices and limitless pleasures.” Despite the effort, despite health worries, he gets up without the slightest hesitation about where this experience is taking him.

“I no longer work, I live happiness.”

He never doubted the project would succeed. But life’s winding paths can put obstacles in the way. They never stopped him or discouraged him. Instead, they strengthened an ineffable feeling: that he is where he belongs.

A Beautiful Life

Asked what a beautiful life means to him, Mathieu Ciarlet answers:

“A beautiful life is a life made of fulfillment, encounters, experiences, and human warmth. A life you earn, where effort is an essential part of the result, a life that unites mind and body, where the search for the simple but efficient gesture is constant.”

The gesture he once sought in cutting raw fish, he now names as a way of living.

Archive Card

His words are drawn from his answers to Human Light’s questions (2026) and from the biography he wrote for his restaurant’s website. C’est Comme à la Maison — Ma bio