Michelin chefs bring northern fine dining expertise to the south

Once a year, chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants congregate in Mauritius to teach their skills to culinary colleagues from the southern hemisphere, where there are only seven Michelin-rated restaurants, all in Argentina.

At the annual Constance Festival Culinaire, held last month, Michelin chefs led a series of events and demonstrations, dinners, and competitions. Among them were Pierre Hermé, the “Picasso of Pastry”; Régis Marcon from the Auvergne-Rhône-Alps region of France and known as “chef of the mountains”; Norwegian Ørjan Johannessen; Italian Roberto Di Pinto; Austrian Lukas Kapeller; and French chef Frédéric Morel.

Hermé says that the pastry chef used to be behind the chef de cuisine, but things have changed. “Pastrymaking has become its own centre of excellence and interest.”

Marcon is famous for his use of wild mushrooms in the kitchen of his family’s hotel, where his restaurant, Régis et Jacques Marcon, has held three Michelin stars for 20 years. “I don’t want to do only a nice design. Clearly, design is important, but more important is the taste,” he says.

Marcon won a top culinary competition, the Bocuse d’Or, in 1995, and earlier this year, his son Paul won the same award.

Johannessen, who won the Bocuse d’Or in 2015, has been attending the Mauritian event for a decade. This year, he served a fish dish from his restaurant Mirabelle on the island of Bekkjarvik.

“I know the hotels, the culture, the producers, so it gives me a lot to work with the tropical vibe and flavours. I want to honour Mauritius and combine tastes

from an island that is warmer than my island,” says Johannessen.

While most chefs presented a single course at a dinner, some were responsible for an entire menu. Hermé and Marcon were also among the judges, and both have a trophy named in their honour at the festival.

Another of the festival’s judges was Jacqueline Mercorelli, known as Mercotte, a French culinary author, blogger and TV judge on Le Meilleur Pâtissier, the French version of The Great British Bake Off. With her was Manon Broutée, a past winner of Le Meilleur Pâtissier.

Many of the chefs come from family-run businesses, with several restaurants linked to hotels. In many cases, their wives are hands-on in the business too.

Hermé is a fourth-generation pastrymaker; Johannessen’s parents ran the hotel and restaurant he now manages, and Marcon’s mother ran the establishment that he took over and transformed. His two sons also work in the restaurant, and his wife is involved in the business.

At the Mauritius festival, dinners were long, multicourse affairs held mostly at Constance Belle Mare Plage and its sister hotel Constance Prince Maurice, just 10 minutes away. Many of the chefs combine the event with an island holiday and bring their families along.

So, do Michelin stars make a difference? Di Pinto, received his first Michelin star two years ago at his restaurant, Sine, in Milan, and whose cuisine is rooted in his Neapolitan upbringing, says that within an hour of receiving the star, he had 100 booking calls. What had been a two-week wait quickly turned into a two-month wait.

Standout meals and courses from the festival week included Black Angus beef tenderloin by Kapeller, asparagus by Marcon, and the “Welcome to Mauritius” fish dish with turbot, gateau piment cassoulet, mango and curry sauce with carri poulet from Johannessen. 

The dinner by Morel, whose restaurant in Germany, Coeur D’Artichaut, got its first star only four months after opening in October 2019, was delicious and light. He prepared grilled beef with eggplant and boucané purée, yuzu pearls (an alginate-based soft shell with juice from the Japanese yuzu fruit), onion emulsion and massalé dressing — all topped off with a coconut mousse dessert.

Among the wines were those by Jonathan Pabiot, a fifth-generation French winemaker from Pouilly-sur-Loire in the Loire Valley, a region renowned for its sauvignon blanc wines.

The glacé dessert by Alain Chartier was sublime and simple, not overly sweet. He is a winner of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France Glacier, a French award for excellence in ice cream. One has to admire a country that takes its gastronomy and culinary arts seriously enough that ice cream can be considered art.