Pascal BARDET

Chef : 1 restaurant

Presentation

Trained at the Souillac hotel school, he began an internship at the Louis XV in Monaco in 1994, working under the famous chef. "My career path is very simple: I stayed there for eighteen years. I arrived as a trainee and was appointed chef from 2007 to 2011. "he recounts.

Yet his story was far from straightforward. "I didn't want to go, because I didn't want to leave home, I was comfortable there, I was afraid of the unknown. The school principal and my mother convinced me to seize the opportunity. Once I walked through the door of the Louis XV, I didn't want to leave!"

Once his internship was over, Pascal Bardet summoned up the courage to ask Alain Ducasse to meet him in person to explain why he wanted to stay. But his mother advised him to finish his studies. Alain Ducasse offers to call him back when he graduates. I'm avery discreet person," he says, "so I spontaneously told him he was going to forget all about me. In all seriousness, he put his glasses on the desk and replied, 'Know one thing: if I forget, it's because I want to. I started at the Louis XV two days after finishing my studies!"

After leaving the Louis XV and passing through the Belles Rives in Juan-les-Pins, Pascal Bardet began to feel homesick. During a lunch with chef Alexis Pélissou, he decided, without any premeditation, to take over his business, Le Grindeau, in Saint-Médard, with his wife Sandrine. "Alexis Pélissou supported me and helped me see the business in a different light."Gault&Millau awarded him 3 toques in his first season. In this human-scale establishment, Pascal Bardet offers a cuisine that lives to the rhythms of the colors, tastes and aromas of the seasons,"not those of the calendar, but of those who have their hands in the earth. I was born here, I know them well, some of them carried me in their arms when I was 3 months old...".

B. G.