Marius DUFAY

Pastry Chef : 1 restaurant

Presentation

While many of his fellow chefs and pastry chefs explain their vocation in terms of a childhood spent under the skirts of a grandmother cook or a father chocolatier, for example, Marius Dufay clearly remembers being fascinated by the almost magical nature of pastry-making.Marius Dufay clearly remembers being fascinated by the almost magical nature of pastry-making: "As early as the fourth grade, I knew it was my vocation. I had a passion for architecture, and the making of a cake, both for its aesthetic dimension and for all the work involved in the transformation of the raw material, captivated me. I didn't necessarily find all that magic in the work of a chef."

When this young man in his thirties joined Ferrandi on leaving college, his career path was already clearly mapped out in his mind. "I always wanted to be able to touch all aspects of the pastry-making profession in the broadest sense. I worked at Dalloyau, where we rehearsed our routines endlessly. I then chose to join the Mandarin Oriental to discover the world of luxury hotels and work there as a chocolatier-confiseur, before spending almost a year as a "boutique" pastry chef at Nicolas Bernardé, in La Garenne-Colombes."

In 2013, Marius Dufay experienced a true revelation with Christian Le Squer at Ledoyen. "This confirmed my desire to become a pastry chef in a top restaurant. Pierre Gagnaire, with whom I then worked for over two years in Nîmes, at Le Duende, would overturn everything I had taken for granted, with his almost philosophical and poetic vision of cuisine."

At Le Mirazur, where he joined at the beginning of 2022, Marius Dufay says he has found his equilibrium with a chef who imagines a cuisine in tune with nature, seasonal produce and the cycles of the Moon. "It's an approach to the profession that moves me, that questions me. This quest for meaning is essential for me." In 2024, Gault&Millau awarded him the Pâtissier trophy for the PACA region.