AM par Alexandre Mazzia

13008 MARSEILLE

19/20
Exceptional Restaurant

BOOK

10 PHOTOS

Chef Alexandre Mazzia

Cooking Gastronomic | specialty

Services Private parking

Price Indicative price per person (excl. drinks)

195€ à 425€

Gault&Millau's review

19/20

Exceptional Restaurant What was it like before cooking? Asking this question of Alexandre Mazzia can plunge you into an abyss of reflection as metaphysical as imagining what preceded the Big Bang. Of course, we've known some of these revolutionaries who changed the face of the world, like the Veyrat or Gagnaire, for example, or even Ferran Adrià, who pulled out all the stops, with a touch of magic. But here, in this tightly-packed bistro setting, with its counter (the best seat in the house) facing the cooks, one against the other, bringing out all those improbable plates, there's no sleight of hand, but a lot of hard work, unheard of until now, to ensure that every bit of taste is thought through, studied in all its facets, desired and finally translated with atomic clock precision by this great basketball player who is more than a chef, more than a cook and often more than an artist. And if you ask him how he can be so prolific, so relentless, so invested in being at once the composer, the performer and the one who carries the piano, he smiles with that childlike naturalness to reply: "But that's life! It's my life! An evening at Alexandre Mazzia's tells the story of all those hours of research into fermentation, roasting, the link between the five facets of taste, between the sea and the vegetable, with the overriding concern for naturalness (no products transformed by chemistry, no synthetic sugar for example, no seasoning other than homemade...). If we want to be more precise about Mazzia 2024 compared to its predecessor, we'd say that the sequence is a little more Gagnairian (one dish, satellites) and a little less "Spanish" (bites everywhere, a frantic cavalcade of flavors and textures), allowing moderns and classics alike to experience the same intensity of pleasure. In the thirty, forty or fifty-odd courses, depending on the menu chosen, Alex gives his all: he's there in the thin saffron-crystallized cabbage leaf, caviar bottarga with ginger condiment and burnt mackerel heads (a good chef would take six months to achieve such a result and make it a flagship dish; for him, it's one of twelve mise en bouche, placed on each table as a prelude, all at the same level of demand and elaboration). He blows you away with his steamed razor clams with barley sake, iodized condiment and seaweed, green apple water and fennel, and creates a great dish on langoustine, "with your fingers" sesame seaweed popcorn with bonito lemon geranium condiment accompanying the central version, seaweed glazed with lamb beurre blanc plankton marine virgin dragon juice and bottarga... And if, at random in this splendid parade, we find a few Mazzian markers (chocolate eel, harissa raspberry on the dazzling line hake sweet and sour gel green satay juice), never five minutes go by without admiring astonishment and a wow effect ; right through to the dessert sequence, with some fifteen courses after wasabi horseradish and diplotaxia ice cream, including fermented banana puffed rice peanut kumquat Espelette gel, spiced pear and hibiscus, frosted corn and 25-year balsamic, and raisin lacquered with chili water and tarragon condiment... The cellar is still searching for its identity, between nature and the big labels, but the new sommelier is finding very interesting (and difficult) matches with such a sensory profusion.