Real Estate

Sip Cognac

Florian Hugo, the executive chef of Brasserie Cognac, and his wife, Michelle, had an absolute requirement when they were looking for a home on the Upper East Side.

“I’m from the south of France, where the sun is always shining,” Florian says. “Michelle comes from Manila, where it’s very beautiful and open. We need a sunny home with a lot of space.”

Last year, they found what they wanted: a spacious, 1,200-square-foot one-bedroom, two-bathroom rental with floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows and northeast exposures that allow the Hugos to see all the way up Second Avenue.

“We chose this apartment mostly for the view,” Florian says. “We can see the whole city from our windows.

“And this is a very nice living space. We saw a lot of two-bedrooms, but most of them were smaller than this.”

Here, the living/dining area alone is 700 square feet. And even though it’s officially a one-bedroom, the bedroom is large enough to carve into two areas separated by a room divider. So the grown-up Hugos have their private half and 4½-year-old daughter Ella-Rose has hers.

“We love this place,” Michelle says. “We have another year to go on our lease, but we’ve already decided to renew.”

To make the most of the space, the Hugos kept the furniture spare and minimal. The main pieces are two long, lean sofas that look like they’re made of suede. “They’re actually microfiber,” Michelle says. “It’s more practical when you have a child. There are always stains and, with this, you can wash it and the stain just disappears.”

Aside from the constant presence of fresh flowers and Michelle’s paintings, everything else is subject to change. Make that frequent change. “We switch things around often,” Florian says.

“We move things around and buy new things to create a new look, a new feeling,” Michelle adds. “Different seasons, different moods. Mostly, we switch accessories but sometimes furniture, too. The longest we’ve had a sofa is two years.”

Something that will never change is Florian’s pride in his family history. He’s the great, great, great grandson of author Victor Hugo (“Les Miserables” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”).

“My whole family — every single generation — has been in the arts,” he says. “Both my father and my grandfather were goldsmiths. It was expected that I would follow in their footsteps. But I wanted to cook.”

He is 35 now; he started cooking when he was 12. A picky eater in his childhood, his mother finally told him to cook for himself. Later, he trained in France, then worked with Alain Ducasse in Paris, Monaco and London. Eventually, he came to New York to be Ducasse’s sous chef at the Essex House.

“I suffered,” he says. “It was physical because you stand 18, 19 hours in the kitchen every day. You get yelled at, you get hit, pushed around by a 350-pound chef. But now I’m happy. No matter what happens now, I know I can get through it.

“At Brasserie Cognac . . . I’m the executive chef, but I also do a lot of managing the restaurant. So, any problem affecting Cognac comes to me. A true description of executive chef would be problem solver.”

But any problems and all the long hours (11 a.m. to 11 p.m.) don’t keep Florian from his most cherished time of the day. Every morning, he and Ella-Rose prepare breakfast. They make pancakes, or French toast, and sit down with Michelle to eat and talk about the day ahead.

“I like to help,” Ella-Rose says. “I do everything with him.”

Florian Hugo’s favorite things

* The dining area: “The time I see the whole family is in the mornings, when we have breakfast together,” he says.

* Michelle’s paintings, including one of a sad-looking Asian woman she painted when her father was critically ill. “I paint when I’m sad,” she says.

* His wine collection in the foyer, including a 1996 Chateau Haut-Brion he paid $600 for in 2001

* A book, “Bijoux d’Artistes,” by Pierre Hugo, Florian’s dad. It’s a tribute to Pierre’s father and how he made gold-medallion replicas of Picasso’s work.