Régis MARCON

Chef : 1 restaurant

Presentation

Jacques and Régis, son and father, a lasting model, an ideal transmission. Because they don't cook "four-handed", as the gazettes put it, because each brings two hands, a head and a heart. It's Jacques who's "in charge" today, and he's a boss like his father. With the help, consent and mutual association of both, each season they offer a menu that marvelously represents the "Maison Marcon" as a whole, and that is as full of personality as it is the fruit of joint and prodigious reflection and fine-tuning.

It all began in the 1950s, in the village of Saint-Bonnet-le-Froid. Régis Marcon's parents ran a small, unpretentious inn, which their son, a self-taught chef, worked hard to bring to the top. He won the Prix Taittinger in 1989, the Bocuse d'Or in 1995, and the title of Chef of the Year in our 2001 issue.

At the time, we knew that he had attracted mushroom zealots, rare herb enthusiasts and, above all, lovers of a multifaceted cuisine firmly rooted in the land. As the historic address became too small, Régis Marcon dreamed of an entirely new home, open to nature, higher up in the village.

By 2005, the move was complete, the old restaurant had become a bistro annex, and his son Jacques, born in 1978, had been at his side since the previous year. The two men have never changed their philosophy in the heart of such a rugged yet generous nature, the Velay on one side, the Vivarais on the other.

Today, Saint-Bonnet-le-Froid is not one of the most remote places in the country, it's quite simply the center of the world, the crucible of a new dawn, thanks also to a perfectly executed transmission between father and son.