What if the best lesson in eating well came from a 6 m² maid’s room on the 6th floor, under the roofs of Paris?
In this tiny space, Frenchwoman Nathalie George built a way of cooking that has become an editorial phenomenon and a source of ideas for those who live high, tight and broke.
For almost twenty years, Nathalie George lived and cooked in a maid’s room on the 6th floor of a building in the 16th arrondissement, surrounded mainly by students.
First to stand up despite a serious financial setback, then to share, she transformed this tiny space into a laboratory of simple, economical and joyful recipes. His stories, like his tips, speak today to all those who live under roofs or in tiny studios: students, young professionals, retirees.
Nathalie George, the 6th floor kitchen as a life lesson
When her life turns upside down due to a tax matter, Nathalie George finds herself without savings and must leave the large bourgeois apartments for this 6th floor under the roof.
She confides: , in an interview for the Toki Woki show on France 3, explaining that this know-how helps her get back on her feet.
For her, what she calls her “6th floor kitchen” is about more than just the recipes.
She sums it up: insists Nathalie George.
Eating well under the roof: Nathalie George’s method
Over the years, her neighbors on the floor have mainly been students, for whom she has designed a kitchen on a very low budget. Questioned by Le Parisien, she summarizes:
In his “6th arrondissement kitchen”, the basics are clear: lentils, rice, potatoes, eggs, affordable smoked fish, cans of sardines or tuna fill the cupboard. To add flavor, she relies on herbs, garlic, onion, shallot, and uses the bare minimum:
- Two pots, two frying pans, a lid, a board, a few knives, a peeler, a grater, a ladle, a skimmer and a small oven.
From the maid’s room to the book The kitchen on the 6th floor
From this life under the roof was born the book, first published by Éditions Herodios then republished, in pocket format by J’ai lu.
Sold more than 15,000 copies and awarded the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, it tells in three acts how a 6 m² room becomes a theater of cooking and meetings. Today, Nathalie George also runs monthly cooking workshops for students with the town hall of the 5th arrondissement, extending what she summarizes in one motto:
Nathalie George?
French cook who lived and cooked on the 6th floor.
Eat well as a student?
Simple recipes: lentils, potatoes, eggs, inexpensive fish.
Minimum equipment recommended?
Two pots, two frying pans, a few knives and a small oven.
