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Alain Ducasse
I interviewed Alain Ducasse, when he was the chef of the restaurant Plaza Athénée who oversees the cuisine of this Palace and balances it around these three themes:
- Restaurant offerings in luxury hotels
- The French art of welcoming
- The art of the table: tableware
I invite you to read about his responses and simultaneously learn more about the new offerings that he has made available at the Plaza Athénée.
The majority of your restaurants are found in luxury hotels:
What is your view of the relationship between the hotel staff and the kitchen staff, between the hotel and the restaurant? How is the restaurant related (or not related) to the spirit of the hotel? How do you see what you’ve brought to the Plaza Athénée over the years? How has your restaurant evolved from the beginning to today?
They’re very closely related professions. Just think of the bygone profession of the innkeeper: he maintained the bedroom and the kitchen. Anyway, I consider myself an innkeeper of sorts, since I devote myself to three establishments that offer both rooms and a table. At the Plaza Athénée, I have an interlocutor whom I have known and worked with for a very long time: François Delahaye. We often have very lively discussions because we each possess our own convictions—him with his career as a hotelkeeper, me with my profession as a chef. But at heart, we are, he as much as I, driven by the same manic desire to offer our clients an exceptional experience in our establishment, and so, we always manage to arrive at some kind of agreement.
I’m convinced that every space possesses some kind spirit and that it’s this spirit that dictates everything—the hotel as much as the restaurant. There cannot, therefore, exist any part of the establishment that is completely disconnected from the rest. This is true for the hotel and the restaurant, but it’s also true for the bar, the lobby, and the rest of the ensemble.
Then, of course, these places have to breathe life. On one hand, for technical reasons—we have to grow, develop, and keep up with the latest trends. But there are also technical reasons: we have a regular clientele that, at the same time, is attracted to novelty. So, if we don’t evolve, if we don’t bring anything new, we only devolve. The Plaza Athénée understands this, and this is why the building has undergone important developments that allow us today to offer our clients a new experience, both through hotel and restaurant offerings.
A few examples of Alain Ducasse’s restaurants in prestigious hotels around the world:
Alain Ducasse’s restaurant at the Hotel Le Meurice in Paris
Le Louis XV-Alain Ducasse, at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco
The Alain Ducasse Restaurant at the Dorchester in London
Discover other elements from this interview:
An Encounter with Alain Ducasse at the Plaza Athénée: His Take on the French Art of Welcoming
An Encounter with Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée: The Art of the Table
Update
After the departure of multi-starred chef Alain Ducasse from the Plaza Athénée, Jean Imbert will succeed him at the head of the kitchens of the palace since July 2021. Revealed by the cooking show Top Chef broadcast on M6 in 2012, he is in charge of the hotel’s six restaurants, namely the Table Gastronomique, the Cour Jardin, the Galerie, the Relais Plaza, the Montaigne terrace and the Bar. More recently, at the end of 2020 and during 2021, he has begun several collaborations with the luxury house of Dior.
Laurent Delporte, an editor and conference speaker, is a strategic expert in the sector of hotels. A visionary, he brings his unique look on hotels in service to the decision-makers in the industry, whether to enhance the development of new projects or strategic visions.
Laurent has visited and audited over 350 hotels across the world and also participates in mystery visits to provide quality control for the world’s finest hotels.
