Dan BESSOUDO

Chef : 2 restaurants Propriétaire : 2 restaurants A self-taught chef with a passion for the culinary arts, Dan Bessoudo aims to create a collective vibe in his Scandinavian-influenced restaurant.

Presentation

Dan Bessoudo never attended a catering high school, a rare occurrence for a chef of his generation. "My parents were adamant that I should follow a traditional route. I took a baccalaureate in economics in the late 1980s, even though I knew I was going to be a chef. It's a good thing they insisted, because that diploma ultimately opened doors for me later in my career."

Once he'd earned his diploma, the young Toulon native enrolled at the École des arts culinaires d'Écully (the future Institut Paul Bocuse, renamed Institut Lyfe), where he learned the basics of the trade before being offered a job with Potel et Chabot in Saint Petersburg. It was 1993," recalls Dan Bessoudo. The collapse of the Communist regime was still recent. It was a bit like the Wild West, you had to manage to find products, organize events and manage day-to-day life. It was an intense time for me.

After a few months as private chef to Claude Imbert (then director of Le Point magazine and member of the gastronomic Club des Cent), Dan Bessoudo joined Guy Savoy's kitchens, then those of the Élysées du Vernet. But it was above all with Philippe Braun, at Le Laurent - "a master of classicism from whom I learned a lot" - and in Stockholm, where he spent five years working in the restaurant business. Stockholm, where he spent five years in the kitchens of the famous Operakällaren, that the Var native truly forged his culinary identity, between tradition and innovation.

In 2004, this enthusiast of the culinary arts ("a passion born during my years spent in Sweden") bought the Table de Ventabren, which he expanded a few years later to make it one of the region's most exciting addresses. "In the restaurant, what counts for me is succeeding in creating a collective vibration. I work a lot on stress management with my teams, and I prefer to be in the kitchen every day rather than on TV. " In 2024, Gault&Millau will reward the man who has only missed "five or six services" in twenty years of practice with a 15/20 (3 toques) rating and the Terroir d'Exception 2024 award for the region.