Anaïs CUNIN

Chef de service : 1 restaurant A former teacher who found her calling as a server at the Beef Club in Paris, Anaïs Cunin runs L'Omnivore in Pau with her husband Stéphane—one of the city’s favorite restaurants, located on Place Gramont.

Presentation

Anaïs Cunin’s entry into the restaurant industry was the result, as is often the case with her peers, of a series of coincidences. The young woman, who grew up in Vendôme, was working as a teacher when she decided, “at age 26 , ” to move to Paris and work as a waitress at the Beef Club, a restaurant in the 1st arrondissement where she knew a few people.“I started there as a commis, obviously with no experience, and I really found my calling in that world. Pretty quickly, I was managing the front-of-house team. And it was at the Beef Club that I met Stéphane, my future husband.”

In Pau, the Cunins bought a bistro with a shaky foundation

The young couple quickly decided to leave the capital to open their first restaurant, though they had a few requirements: “We didn’t want to settle in one of our hometowns, nor in a place that was too touristy. We came across an ad for a restaurant for sale in Pau, the Bistrot d’À Côté, in the Béarn region—close to both the ocean and the mountains, and at the heart of a rich local terroir.” Anaïs and Stéphane moved into this charming old building in 2015, though it held a few unpleasant surprises… “The building is built on wooden stilts. The kitchen floor was sinking deeper and deeper; you could almost see the slope with the naked eye. We had to undertake major renovation work a few months before the Covid pandemic.”

From Bistrot d’À Côté to L’Omnivore: A Successful Rebirth

In the summer of 2019, the restaurant reopened under a new name. Goodbye to Bistrot d’À Côté, welcome to L’Omnivore. “We decided to keep the name when we took over the business, which ultimately wasn’t a great idea—regulars didn’t always realize there had been a change in staff and cuisine. We had to answer the same questions after we changed the name ,” says Anaïs with a smile. She now oversees a lovely wine cellar, and her work in the dining room—supported by a small team—is clearly a key factor in the resounding success of this charming, brasserie-style restaurant.