Anthony AYCAGUER

Chef : 1 restaurant

Presentation

It's the image of his grandmother's Spanish dishes that comes to mind when Anthony Aycaguer recalls his childhood.

Brought up in a gourmet family, Anthony Aycaguer was destined more for soccer than for cooking. However, before he was 18, his career as a chef began. One day, while eating in a Spanish restaurant where a place was vacant on the team, he decided, "a little on the spur of the moment", to apprentice. the start of what he describes as a"rather special" apprenticeship. A self-taught man, Anthony Aycaguer trained in crêperies, pizzerias and more traditional restaurants. He often feels out of place.

With his partner, they moved around a lot: Brittany, Côte d'Azur, Lot-et-Garonne: "At each establishment, we gained a bit of rank". It was at Château Lalande, in Saint-Sylvestre-sur-Lot (Lot-et-Garonne), that the chef began to realize that he was capable of doing just as well as the others. Maybe even differently. In 2005, he moved to the Bordeaux region, where he worked in a bistro for over five years: "I had total freedom". From 35 covers at lunchtime, the restaurant grew to 90, buoyed by an adage that continues to haunt the chef: "If, at 45, you're a chef and you don't have your own restaurant, it's because you're a marble."

That was all it took for Anthony Aycaguer to follow this fine precept and open Blisss "in a totally unlikely location" in 2016, as his 45th spring approached. His ambition? A bistro with an offbeat menu. A few months later, in view of the unsatisfactory clientele, he quickly took a more gastronomic turn. Success came in the form of what the chef himself describes as a "completely mad proposal", where people have to guess the ingredients on their plate through a form of riddle. Anthony Aycaguer, ably assisted by his wife in the dining room and his son in the kitchen, was quickly awarded 2 toques.

T. L.