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Gault&Millau
Contact
37-39 rue Boissière
75016 Paris
France
Phone : 01 41 40 99 80
A talented chef, a genius entrepreneur and a passionate trainer, Alain Ducasse is all of these things, the man who is so often mocked for his multi-faceted approach, but whom everyone admires and envies for all he has achieved.for his insolent success at the helm of the Louis XV in Monaco, the Meurice in recent years, and the Plaza Athénée until a few months ago.
He was born in the Landes region of France in 1956, and has retained the accent and the wit. As a young man, he worked in the kitchens of Michel Guérard and Roger Vergé, but it was his meeting with Alain Chapel that changed his life. With the grand master of Mionnay, he admits to relearning the art of cooking from scratch. His life turned upside down in 1984, when he was the only survivor of a plane crash in the Alps. He had been working at La Terrasse, the Juana restaurant in Juan-les-Pins, since 1980. In our 1986 issue, he scored 17/20, and was praised for his ardor and enthusiasm, and his cuisine freely inspired by Vergé and Chapel. He was snapped up and, in 1987, Monaco's SBM offered him the opportunity to oversee the opening of Louis XV, the restaurant at the Hôtel de Paris.
Alain Ducasse was just over 30 years old, and quickly earned an 18/20 rating, ably assisted by Franck Cerutti, who had been recruited from Enoteca Pinchiorri, Florence's top restaurant. Less than 10 years later, in 1996, he succeeded Joël Robuchon at 59, avenue Poincaré, Paris. He was once again acclaimed by the critics, earning 19/20 in our columns, and revolutionized the world of gastronomy with his then-new realism, insisting that a restaurant is first and foremost a business.
At the same time, he became president of the Châteaux & Hôtels Collection chain (now Teritoria), opened a cooking school that is now a must, ran the Jules Verne restaurant on the Eiffel Tower for more than 10 years, and supervised the restoration of Le Meurice...
With all these activities under his belt, the new champion of "naturalness" is a central figure in French and international gastronomy, capable of bouncing back at any time, unstoppable and indestructible.
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