17/05/2025

LYFE SATURDAY | MAY 17, 2025

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Cookware becoming designer items

T HEY feature in the Duchess of Sussex’s With Love, Meghan Netflix cooking show. They have been spotted in rapper Snoop Dogg’s kitchen. Top chefs cannot live without them and TikTok posts draw millions. For a maker of pots and pans, Le Creuset has had an astonishing global run and cult-like following that nobody could have predicted when the company first set out to produce staple kitchenware in Fresnoy-le-Grand, a modest village in northern France, in 1925. Two Belgian entrepreneurs built what, a century later, is still Le Creuset’s home factory in the village of barely 3,000 inhabitants, home of the company’s trademark enamelled cast-iron cookware. The flagship Dutch oven model, o Global cult following keeps Le Creuset simmering

now available in about 100 colours, started out exclusively in flaming orange, which still makes Le Creuset pots instantly recognisable. With a price tag in the region of €250 (RM1,201) for basic cast-iron models – rising fast for elaborate models or special editions – Le Creusets are high-end designer creations with a reputation for indestructibility. Crucible All the company’s cast-iron cookware is still exclusively made in the Fresnoy-le-Grand factory, the centrepieces of which are two giant electric furnaces – also called “creuset”, which is French for “crucible”. The furnaces heat molten cast iron to 1,550°C, the melting point for this iron and carbon alloy. The blindingly bright liquid, hotter than lava, is then poured into a transfer recipient, which is automatically carried along a rail. The cast iron is poured quickly into sand moulds shaped by metal patterns to make raw products. The

Le Creuset cookware being displayed at the foundry store.

I do not know another culture that would do that, where it just breaks down all boundaries.” In the show, Tucci travels to five regions – Tuscany, Lombardy, Trentino Alto-Adige, Lazio and Abruzzo. While not a fan of spice, Tucci said he was willing to try anything: “I sort of did, I think, on this trip. There was lots of offal, which I love.” “When I was watching the episodes again, I was like, there really is a lot of offal in these episodes... but that is just a part of what Italy is and that is what they eat.” Tucci, the author of several remaining cast iron and sand are recycled back into the manufacturing process. After being ground by robots and stripped by being exposed to bombardment with tiny steel beads, the utensils are glazed with enamel – a mixture of glass, quartz, clay, water and colourants – before vitrification at nearly 800°C. The resulting variety of shapes and colours presents an industrial challenge, but “really embodies the strength and DNA of the brand,” said Frederic Salle, manager of the site. Le Creuset now sells 95% of its production abroad, in more than 80 countries, but keeps a tight lid on financial data, which the privately held company is not obliged to disclose. Things were not always upbeat. When Paul van Zuydam, a Briton with a South African background, bought Le Creuset in 1988, customers had gone cool on the brand. But van Zuydam, who is still Le Creuset’s president, pushed the company’s international expansion, established it at the high segment of the market and diversified production sites for non-cast iron products to foreign countries, including China and Thailand. Social media success Le Creuset has 575 retail outlets in the world, with online sales having received a boost from a home cooking craze during the Covid-19 pandemic.

US buyers wealthy enough to purchase Le Creuset products in the past will probably not be put off by any tariff hikes. – PICS FROM AFP

A Le Creuset foundry employee at work.

cookbooks, has Italian origins and has lived as well as visited the country before – including for his previous travel and food show, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy . “The more I travel through Italy, the more I see... reminders of people in my childhood. You might see somebody who looks like your aunt or your great aunt or your grandfather... and it makes you feel connected to the people that you have lost,” he said. Tucci in Italy streams on Disney+ from next Monday and premieres on National Geographic next Wednesday. – Reuters “The brand is doing very well pretty much everywhere in the world,” said Marie Gigot, managing director for France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Like for many global companies, US President Donald Trump’s tariff threats are a concern, she acknowledged. “The situation changes every day, so we follow it very closely.” But US buyers wealthy enough to purchase Le Creuset products in the past will probably not be put off by any tariff hikes, said Nick Stene, head of home and garden research at Euromonitor, a market research company. “Homes that can afford to invest in the higher price points, especially

over US$300 (RM1,287) for luxury cookware, are the last households to feel the pain when buying power is under pressure,” he said. Le Creuset has been “one of the strongest performers” in the homeware category, which has seen around 4.5% annual growth since 2019, he said. One major factor of success has been social media, where proud owners like to showcase their Le Creuset to prove they can afford it, but also that they “know how to use it properly”, accompanied by hashtags such as #LeCreuSlay, he said. “There is nothing quite as efficient as having your customers also act as your ambassadors and marketing team,” added Stene. – AFP

A worker packs enamelled cast-iron casseroles.

Stanley Tucci launches Italy culinary travel series

STANLEY Tucci is no stranger to hosting a television series, but when asked how it compares to acting, the Oscar nominee is clear: “Hosting is harder because you have to be yourself. And the reason actors become actors is they probably do not want to be themselves all the time,” he said, laughing. Known for films such as Conclave , Julie & Julia , The Devil Wears Prada and The Hunger Games , Tucci embarks on a culinary journey across Italy in his new show Tucci in Italy . From sampling traditional knödel in Trentino Alto-Adige to tucking into

succulent porchetta in Lazio, the five-episode series sees him talking to chefs, farmers, shopkeepers and everyday Italians about their food and traditions. He describes it as “an exploration of what makes up Italy through the prism of food”. “(Italians) live to eat and everybody else eats to live... You can talk to a cab driver and you can talk to someone of the aristocracy... and they will talk about food in the same way,”Tucci said. “And were they to meet, they would talk about food in the same way and they would talk in-depth about it.

Tucci is also an author. – REUTERSPIC