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feel like it is difficult. I see it like an extraordinary opportunity to renew my cuisine, to innovate, to exchange, to propose, and sometimes also to question myself. This has been even more true when I received the third star: my cuisine has been totally unbridled and I have not been afraid of anything anymore!” Describing cooking as “my passion” (“I love to do it. That’s it.”), Alléno’s fondness for food started early – aged eight, to be precise – with his parents who “ran some bistros in Paris and around…” at its roots. “We used to stay in the kitchen with my mum so always I was around food. At that time the
food was the priority, now they [kids] change to the telephones, to fashions; young people are more interested in these things, the value of families now is not the same. It’s very interesting to see how the things change.” Ah, change, this is my cue to take Alléno back to the matter of his reported career move, a move that will send him from Paris to the snow-dipped environs of exclusive Courchevel to helm the intimate, twoMichelin-starred 1947. I dare to ask, why leave the glitz of Le Meurice now? “There is nothing special to say on it,” he ventures. “I spent 10 years here and it’s really time for me to work on my
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creativity. I want to go in another way, to discuss something else, and the advantage is that the restaurant there is open for five months and we will work on food and beverage research for six months – that’s why, to push up the level.” Clearly, the prospect of Alléno hanging up his apron strings for a post outside the kitchen, as some Michelin star chefs have done before him, isn’t going to happen anytime soon. “I’m 44 and I think I will stop to work around 80”, he laughs. At that moment his mobile rings, “a reservation,” he says with a wink, before answering. Now that’s what I call star service.