Pierre ORSI

Chef : 2 restaurants

Presentation

"My parents were bistro owners. As I was a bad pupil at school, my father found no other solution than to put me in the kitchen," explains Pierre Orsi. He got off to a promising start, especially when his chef was Georges Bocuse, father of a certain Paul Bocuse. With the CAP in his pocket, he was recruited by Le Cordon Bleu in Boulogne-Billancourt, before being called up for military service.

In 1961, he obtained a position at Lucas Carton on Monsieur Paul's recommendation. A year later, he joined Maxim's, during its golden age. Then, after half a season at the Auberge du Père Bise in Talloires (Haute-Savoie), he had to return to the family guinguette to help his father who had been in a car accident. "I was furious to have to leave so soon.

1965 marked the start of his Anglo-Saxon adventures. To learn English, the young chef joined the brigade at the Café Royal in London. "But I was with Spaniards and Italians, and we spoke French all day. So I went to see the chef and he sent me to a boarding house in Cornwall". In 1967, Louis Vaudable, owner of Maxim's, offered him the position of head chef in Chicago. "Inwardly, I thought I couldn't do it, but after a week I knew I could do the job", he says, before moving on to the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, the King Cole Restaurant in Indianapolis and finally Ninety-Fifth in Chicago.

Enriched by these experiences abroad and his MOF title obtained in 1972, the chef and his wife, Geneviève, opened Restaurant Pierre Orsi on Place Kléber in Lyon in September 1975. Although it wasn't easy to carve out a place for himself among Lyon's top establishments, the "Orsi kid" went on to sell out . On April 29, 2023, at the age of 80, Pierre Orsi retires and announces the definitive closure of his establishment.

I. B.