Farès AWAD

Chef : 1 restaurant Farès Awad, executive chef at Alexandre Gauthier's new Sur Mer restaurant in Merlimont, offers a maritime cuisine full of flavor and identity.

Presentation

Born in Israel in 1993, Farès Awad grew up in a family of cooks. At the age of 18, however, it was to the theater that he wanted to turn. At the same time, he worked as a dishwasher in a café, but soon began helping out in the kitchen. Three months later, his father offered him ten months' training in the kitchen, culminating in an internship. It was in this way, in 2013, that the young man met Ran Rosh, an Israeli chef who had passed through the Institut Bocuse: "It's partly thanks to him that I'm here".

From then on, Farès Awad wanted to join the Lyon school. But the training was expensive. For three years, he pursued his career in the chef's gastronomic restaurant, on the pastry side, and discovered the existence of scholarships, which he obtained in 2016. The young man trains as a chef at the Institut Paul Bocuse until 2019. His first internship was at Alexandre Gauthier's La Grenouillère. He also worked at Partisan Boulanger, in Lyon, and in a hotel in Amsterdam, before officially starting at Alexandre Gauthier.

At the end of 2019, he arrived at l'Anecdote, in Montreuil-sur-Mer: "It was my first experience as a chef." In 2023, Sur Mer opened in Merlimont, with Farès Awad as executive chef. It is here that his rich, nuanced identity blends with the chef's desires. At Sur Mer, he evokes a dish from Jewish cuisine that his Muslim grandmother used to make at home, which he has adapted to Alexandre Gauthier's style for the restaurant's identity. All of which adds up to a cuisine full of blends, earning Farès Awad the Cuisine de Mer, des Lacs et des Rivières Hauts-de-France trophy.

T. L.