Passion Dessert: welcome to the 2020 promotion!

For the second consecutive year, the MICHELIN Guide, in partnership with Valrhona, wanted to highlight the profession of pastry chef. Selected by our inspectors, the Passion Dessert 2020 promotion highlights highly talented pastry chefs of all generations.

Our era sees an incredible number of talents in baking. Today, the star pastry chefs are followed by thousands of subscribers on social networks. To the delight of gourmets, the pastry chef has accomplished a brilliant metamorphosis: now, his profession is a dream. His name appears on restaurant cards. Dessert has become an essential landmark in the experience of haute cuisine and the French meal – especially since it is the end point …

The modern pastry chef, like the chef, has made a decisive return to nature and taste. Locavorism and seasonality oblige, producers are among its interlocutors. Like the new kitchen of the 1970s, today’s pastry drives out (bad) sugar, calories and fat. This quest for meaning is accompanied by a return to taste. The pastry chef “cooks” his desserts, seasoning them and working to balance the flavors, like the best chefs. Saffron, chili or specific peppers, such as citrus scent sansho, are part of his pantry.

Produced in partnership with Valrhona, the Passion Dessert 2020 promotion aims to highlight these pastry chefs who combine technical excellence and awareness of their environment on a daily basis. A local and seasonal fruit will always be tastier, the products used in cooking are not independent of the producers who produce them, nor of the consumers. In 2020, haute cuisine must be ethical, taking into account its social, economic and human impacts; the MICHELIN Guide and Valrhona share the conviction that pastry has an important role to play in this development.

The Passion Dessert 2020 promotion:

François Josse, Taillevent (Paris)
Virginie Apparé, La Table de la Butte (Plouider)
Aurelien Rivoire, Alléno Paris at the Pavillon Ledoyen (Paris)
Alexandre Blay, Skiff Club (La-Teste-de-Buch)
Adrien Salavert, Le Gabriel (Paris)
Eric Raynal, The Garden of Benjamin (Lorgues)
Pascal Basso, Le Colombier (Bartenheim-la-Chaussée)
Sylvain Mathy, La Villa Archange (Le Cannet)
Julien Ochando, La Palme d’Or (Cannes)
The Passion Dessert 2019 promotion:

Eric Verbauwhede, Pic (Valence)
Jérémie Bousseau, Anne de Bretagne (La Plaine-sur-Mer)
Julien Dugourd, La Chèvre d’Or (Èze)
Sébastien Vauxion, Le Montgomerie (Courchevel 1850)
Ludovic Soufflet, Meurin (Busnes)
Patrice Ibarboure, Table of the Ibarboure Brothers (Bidart)
Jessica Prealpato, Alain Ducasse at Plaza Athénée (Paris)
Julien Alvarez, Épicure (Paris)
Jordane Stiee, La Grand-Vigne (Martillac)
François Perret, La Table de l’Espadon (Paris)
Cédric Grolet, Le Meurice Alain Ducasse (Paris)
Michaël Bartocetti, George V (Paris)
Yoann Normand, Le Parc Les Crayères (Reims)
Rodolphe Tronc, Mother Brazier (Lyon)
Nicolas Multon, Villa René Lalique (Wingen-sur-Moder)
Jonathan Wahid, Fanny Rey and Jonathan Wahid (Saint-Rémy-de-Provence)
Lucile Darosey, Loiseau des Ducs (Dijon)
Loic Colliau, Christophe Bacquié (Le Castellet)
Anthony Fresnay, René and Maxime Meilleur (Saint-Martin-de-Belleville)
Jessy Rhinn-Auvray, La Fourchette des Ducs (Obernai)
Toshyiya takatsuka, Kei (Paris)
Brandon Dehan, L’Oustau de Baumanière (Les Baux-de-Provence)

Chefs mobilized for caregivers

Everywhere in France, chefs and producers, but also distribution channels, join forces to feed caregivers.

The initiative launched by the journalist Stéphane Méjanès and combined with that of the chef at the Élysée kitchens, Guillaume Gomez, has been successful (“the chefs with the carers”). For the past 15 days now, chefs and cooks have been struggling to serve meals to hospital services all over France. All safety instructions and barrier gestures are obviously applied to the letter.

Our list is far from exhaustive. Numerous collectives, associating markets, halls and chefs, also work anonymously, such as in Rennes (with the help of the association Les P’tits Doudous of the CHU de Rennes) or in Nîmes (CHU Carémeau).

Let us cite some of these chiefs and some of their initiatives.

We saw Michel Sarran (Toulouse) distributing croque-monsieur at the CHU in Toulouse.
Simone Zanoni, chef at Le George (Paris), cooks for the children of caregivers in Versailles (he has long worked as a chef at the Trianon Palace) in collaboration with many craftsmen and suppliers.
In Giverny, David Gallienne, the chef at the Michelin-starred restaurant Le Jardin des Plumes and Top Chef candidate, cooks for the hospitals located in Mantes-La-Jolie, Evreux and Vernon. He mobilized all of his suppliers and producers, and even a mill that grinds the fresh flours he needs every night to make his pastries.
No gluten for Nadia Sammut (Auberge La Fenière, in Cadenet) but pastries (gluten-free, because the manager suffers from celiac disease) for the caregivers of Marseille hospitals, made thanks to crowdfunding.
Christophe Aribert (Maison Aribert, 2 stars in Uriage) wanted to bring his “little stone to the building” by preparing dishes for the care team of the Grenoble-Alpes University Hospital (Chuga).
Thirty chefs from the Nantes region provide 300 meals a day to caregivers at the Nantes University Hospital, in partnership with the Nantes national interest market (MIN).
In Grignan, the Michelin-starred chef of Clair de la Plume, Julien Allano started to deliver meals to the CHU de Montélimar.
In Annecy, a group of chefs – Laurent Petit (Le Clos des Sens, 3 stars), Yoann Conte (Restaurant Yoann Conte, 2 stars), Jean Sulpice (Restaurant Jean Sulpice, 2 stars) or Stéphane Dattrino (L’Esquisse, 1 star) and Florian Favario (L’Auberge de Montmin, 1 star) – will deliver meals to Annecy hospital. All menus will be cooked with local products from local producers.

The Daily Chefs confined Julien Allano

Impacted by the confinement orders, the chiefs, used to living at full speed, find themselves unemployed. We asked them how they spent their free time. Today, Julien Allano, chef of Clair de la Plume, in Grignan.

“I was in full service and Jean-Luc, the owner, called me to warn me. Even if I expected after the schools closed, this announcement was both bizarre and extremely violent. Bizarre because we had to look good in front of the clients, try to keep smiling until the end. I must say that at the beginning there was a form of disbelief within the brigade. That did not last very long : the following events, very violent, showed how serious it was and how very complicated it was going to be.

“We managed to throw nothing away”

I had placed all of my orders the previous week. However, I am quite proud to say that we managed to throw nothing away. I received a big delivery from my goat cheese producer (which was going to close). We will sell these cheeses at cost price to customers, in the form of trays. Today, I go to the restaurant every two days to prepare sous-vide cooked dishes for our foreign employees, interns and interns, Argentinian and Ukrainian. They are housed and confined to Clair de la Plume. All this is done in strict compliance with the safety instructions.

“Every two days, I publish a recipe video to make at home”

At home, I’m with family. I admit that I delegated education to my wife … who is more patient than me. For my part, I run the restaurant’s social media. Every two days I publish a recipe video step by step, to make at home. I’m also going to do a contest with internet users: I’ll offer the winner a cooking lesson on the theme “I cook the leftovers from my closet”. Clair de la Plume also approached Montélimar hospital to see how we could help them … ”

Julien Allano is the chef of Clair de la Plume, in Grignan (26).

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