Akrame BENALLAL

Chef : 1 restaurant

Presentation

If Akrame is now one of the darlings of the Parisian foodosphere, it's obviously due in no small part to his talent, but also, to a certain extent, to Gault&Millau.

At the end of 2010, when he had sneaked out of Tours, where he had already caught our eye, we caught up with him on rue de l'Arbre Sec, in Paris, just a few days before we were due to go to press for our 2011 edition. Our mind was made up: we were dealing with a gifted artist.

He's not yet 30, but he's already got his career all mapped out for him. He grew up in Oran with his mother, an excellent cook, and returned to France, where he was born, to take his CAP in cooking before joining the Orangerie du Château, the fine restaurant in Blois.

Akrame is keen to see the country, and leaves the Loire Valley to join Ferran Adrià's kitchens, then those of Les Elysées du Vernet, under Alain Solivérès, before joining Pierre Gagnaire's team. But the young man was on the move and wanted to accumulate as much experience as possible. He eventually settled in Tours, at the Trendy, which he renamed l'Atelier d'Akrame, where we caught up with him before he had to close his establishment and move to Paris.

Since then, he has opened several new restaurants, almost always successfully, but he has also settled on rue Tronchet, in the 8th arrondissement, where this ebullient, inventive and brilliant chef is proving that he has matured while retaining his trademark dose of madness.