Paris, France – 6 February 2018 –
Marc Veyrat, the comeback king of French cuisine, is back at the top of the culinary pecking order after the Michelin guide awarded him the maximum three stars, Agence France-Presse reported.
The flamboyant chef, who is rarely seen without his black Savoyard hat, has now won the top rating for three different restaurants over the course of his career.
Nine years after Veyrat was forced to give up cooking after a serious skiing accident and three after his alpine restaurant La Maison des Bois burned down, the 67-year-old was back at the summit of French cooking.
As his three stars were announced at a Paris theatre, Veyrat told AFP that “you have to hit rock bottom to realise how good things can be,” adding that he felt “like an orphan for the period when I wasn’t in the Michelin guide.”
Famed for his highly inventive creations that mix delicate infusions of wild herbs with hearty traditional Savoyard cooking, Veyrat is one of only two chefs promoted this year to the elite club who hold three stars, the Michelin guide said.
Renowned fish chef Christophe Bacquie of the Castellet Hotel in the Var region of southeast France was also awarded a third star for the first time.
The 45-year-old is best known for his Mediterranean-influenced recipes, including John Dory, crab and caviar served in a perfumed cream of kaffir lime, and whiting in a butter mousse swimming in a reduction of chicken and truffle with truffled mashed potatoes.
Only a tiny club of 28 chefs hold three stars from the Michelin guide, the bible of French gastronomy.
Last week for the first time the Michelin allowed a top French restaurant to bow out of its listings after its chef told AFP he no longer wanted to work under the “huge pressure” of being judged by its undercover inspectors.
Sebastien Bras’ Le Suquet restaurant in the rural Aveyron region had held the maximum three-star rating for 18 years.
Bras confessed that like “all chefs” he sometimes found himself thinking of fellow Frenchman Bernard Loiseau – who committed suicide in 2003, an act is widely seen as linked to rumours that he was about to lose his third Michelin star.