COGNAC: The number of three Michelin star restaurants have risen to 31 after two new restaurants received their coveted three stars at the award ceremony in Cognac on Tuesday 22 March. Arnaud Donckele, already chef of the three Michelin star restaurant La Vague d’Or in St Tropez also clinched three stars for his restaurant Plenitude - Cheval Blanc in Paris. On the other hand, Dimitri and Marielle Droisneau also joined France’s culinary elite for their restaurant La Villa Madie in Cassis. There were six new two Michelin star restaurants and 41 one Michelin star restaurants in the new guide which today has 627 Michelin star restaurants in total, the large majority of them in the Paris region. Jerome Schilling was the first to be called on stage to receive the second star for restaurant Lalique. Duende received its first star in 2021 and a year later the team of Pierre Gagnaire has clinched a second star for their restaurant in the hotel Emperator. Greek chef Philip … [Read more...]
Clamato: A must-have experience in Paris
A few years ago my wife was celebrating her birthday on a Sunday. Armed with a list of 10 restaurants I wanted to take her to, I discovered to my dismay that they were all closed on Sunday. This was Brussels but Paris, just one hour and 20 minutes away by train is no different. The reason for Sunday closure is understandable though frustrating for visitors who do not have a choice. Many restaurants want to give their staff a well deserved weekend break. Beggars cannot be choosers so finding yourself in certain cities on a Sunday or Monday (depending on where you are) requires careful planning. Luckily in Paris, there are places that are open if you know where to look or who to ask. Clamato was one of the options for seven like-minded people from all corners of the world who happened to meet for the workshop of the World Restaurant Awards that was officially launched earlier this week. This fish restaurant/wine bar does not take any bookings and the wait promised to be long … [Read more...]
A truffle kerfuffle in Provence
Foodies are always on the lookout for the uncommon and the creative. This does not always work out well. I once ate at a truffle-only restaurant in the Var in Southern France. The place was called Chez Bruno and was so pretentious you could only see waiters by appointment. When we turned up and announced we were ‘sans reservation’ the Gallic horror and hand wringing was pure comedy. Had Kim Jong Un sauntered over the border yesterday and told the S Korean president ‘I’m gonna nuke your nuts’, he would have taken it better than them. My wife, who considers über-expensive restaurants to be a form of disinheritance, took one look at the assorted Porsches in the carpark and helpfully suggested we eat what was left of the melted brie sandwiches in the car. But I had spotted something worse than the automobiles: this place had a helipad !! Well, fuck-me-blind I thought, if people fly into the mountains to eat at Bruno’s I want in. Somehow we got a table. Don’t ask how, it was ages ago … [Read more...]
Anne Sophie Pic and David Sinapian: Putting human resources at the centre of their business
More and more professionals such as lawyers and engineers are showing an interest in gastronomy says David Sinapian, CEO of Anne-Sophie Pic and president of Les Grandes Tables du Monde. "We have found that staff that do not necessarily have culinary training are not only interested but also capable of following their dreams. They want to be creative and do something different," David told Food and Wine Gazette after his presentation at the congress organised by the collective of chefs from Wallonia, Generation W. "What matters most is their motivation and not their training. We have also found that diversity is extremely important for our business. What people might lack in technical skills can be compensated by other skills such as management skills," he said. David took over the family business with his wife Anne Sophie Pic more than 20 years ago. Since then, they have grown the Pic group to include not only the three Michelin star restaurant (they got the three Michelin … [Read more...]
Roberto Flore, the insectologist chef, to cook at À La Piscine in Lyon
If you are anywhere close to Lyon next week, then you should consider heading to À La Piscine for a unique six course dinner. The guest for two evenings on 15 and 16 September is Sardinian chef Roberto Flore, who works at Nordic Food Lab in Copenhagen with world renowned chef René Redzepi of Noma fame. Roberto is probably the leading chef in the world working to understand the reasons why people eat insects and how this is considered normal in many cultures around the world. A Sardinian, he discovered the 'holy grail' in Sardegna when he was still 8 years old. It was here that he came face to face with casu marzu, a cheese that is literally translated into English as "rotten or putrid cheese". This is a traditional sheep milk cheese that contains live insect larvae (maggots). He says that the seed of his fascination with why people eat insects was planted over 25 years ago at the end of that lunch. "A friend arrived with a piece of casu marzu with maggots jumping all around. … [Read more...]
Atsushi Tanaka: A Japanese chef conquering Paris
It is not easy to describe the cuisine of Japanese chef Atsushi Tanaka even if he has been described as the Picasso of the kitchen by his master Pierre Gagnaire. Even when asked he hesitates before he answers that his cuisine is French at its basic but with influence from his home country Japan and his travels to Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Scandinavia. "I wouldn't call my cuisine French. Yes, there is French influence but I have worked in Spain, Belgium, Netherlands and in Scandinavia (Copenhagen and Stockholm)," he tells Food and Wine Gazette. Probably the best way to describe his cuisine would be international. He agrees telling me he would describe it as an international contemporary and modern cuisine. This young Japanese chef is one of the many chefs that are establishing themselves in the heart of the world's culinary centre Paris and cooking French cuisine. These Japanese chefs have moved from their traditional Japanese cuisine and are making a name for … [Read more...]
Hélène Darroze named female chef of 2015 by World’s 50 Best Restaurants
The World's 50 Best Restaurants have announced that the Veuve Clicquot World's Best Female Chef of 2015 is Hélène Darroze. She is a fourth-generation chef born into a family of chefs who has been cooking since the age of six. She has opened two highly acclaimed restaurants in Paris and London after three years of training under Alain Ducasse. After winning the award, Hélène spoke to The World's Best 50 website (see full interview here) saying that she was not expecting the award. She speaks about the hardships of being a chef and the fact that there are so few women at the top level in this industry. "There's one day in this job when you have to choose between being a wife and a mother and being a chef. The two things are very, very difficult to combine and most of the really talented young women in my kitchen stopped because they wanted to be a mum and a wife and they thought it was not compatible - which is probably not true but for them it was." Hélène who adopted two children … [Read more...]
A few pinches of salt and the loss of a third Michelin star
Michelin has a lot of power despite the fact that reviews of restaurants are a few sentences long. Amid the many announcements of new classifications in France on 2 February 2015, came a decision which surprised many on Twitter. It was Michelin's decision to downgrade the Côte Saint Jacques from its 3 Stars in the next edition of the Michelin 2015. Many were asking why the restaurant had lost its third Michelin star. It seems a few pinches of salt (some flaws in seasoning) may have been the reason. Chef Jean-Michel Lorain left a statement on the hotel's Facebook page which we feel should be highlighted because it illustrates the pressure that chefs face on a daily basis. By the time of writing this post, his comment had received over 800 likes and shared more than 200 times. There were also many comments all encouraging the French chef to continue his great work. Lorain noted that during the last meeting with the director of the Michelin guide in November, he was told that … [Read more...]
France to promote its cuisine worldwide on 19 March
France will be celebrating French gastronomy with a worldwide initiative on 19 March aimed at raising awareness of French cuisine. Over 1300 chefs from all the five continents are expected to join the Goût de / Good France event. Dinners will be served simultaneously in participating restaurants worldwide to honour the merits of French cuisine, its capacity for innovation and its values: sharing, enjoying and respecting the principles of high quality. This initiative was taken by the French foreign ministry as a way to promote French tourism and to send a message to the culinary world that French cuisine is also contemporary. In a way, it is a response to many food guides which have recently tended to ignore France in favour of other gastronomic destinations in the world. The great French chef Auguste Escoffier, who is the father of modern French cuisine, created Epicurean dinners in 1912 where he chose one menu on a given day and served it in cities around the … [Read more...]
Book review: The Road to Burgundy: The Unlikely Story of an American Making Wine and a New Life in France
Many people think of giving everything up to follow their dream. Very few, however, end up taking the plunge. This is the story of Ray Walker who had a secure career in finance until he took a wine-tasting vacation which ignited a passion for wine that he couldn't stifle. Now the interesting part of the story is that unlike most wine lovers who develop their passion over many years, Ray Walker could not be bothered about wine and actually could not really see the point or stand snobbish behaviour related to wine. But once the wine bug hit during a tasting of Burgundy wines, he could not get away from it and pursued his dream taking huge risks and sacrificing family life. Not speaking French, he took the plunge by watching TV or reading old books trying to learn the techniques of wine making and the language and daydreaming about what it would be like to create his own wine. He quits his job and gets his hands dirty with some winemakers in California before heading to France … [Read more...]