William FRACHOT

Chef : 1 restaurant

Presentation

Having lost interest in school, William Frachot turned to the hotel and restaurant business to"calm his family's nerves". An internship in the kitchens of chef Gérard Clément was the turning point. "That'swhere I met my childhood friend Alain Dugay, who is now my right-hand man," he explains.

In 1992, he left for the UK to teach at a catering college. And what better way to train his students than hands-on experience? "I opened my first restaurant at the age of 22, in a foreign country, with real customers!"Three years later, he returned to France, where he joined some fine establishments: Relais Bernard Loiseau in Saulieu, Maison Lameloise in Chagny, and Chocolaterie Fabrice Gillotte. "I was like a knowledge vacuum cleaner," he recalls. In 1996, with his visa in hand, the chef moved to Montreal to work with Normand Laprise, "theemblem of Quebec", then with Nicolas Jongleux, formerly of Alain Chapel and Georges Blanc.

In 1999, he returned to France, to Dijon. There, he bought the Hostellerie du Chapeau Rouge and offered a fusion cuisine that earned him the title of Grand de Demain Gault&Millau 2003. But this "confusion" cuisine, as he calls it, would not be the same after 2011. The chef broke his ankle and was forced to rest for five weeks. "It was a wake-up call to change everything, my vision and my way of working."From then on, he turned to local produce and developed a Burgundian cuisine with an eco-responsible approach. "Themenu got shorter and the work got longer", we note, rewarding him with the Gault&Millau d'Or 2022 Bourgogne-France-Comté.

I.B.