“Throughout my career, I was told that I would never succeed because cooking is not for people like me, because I don’t eat pork and I don’t drink wine,” confides Mohamed Cheikh who says he was the victim of racism because of his origins at the start of his career. “At the time, someone called Mohamed in a kitchen was the one who did the washing up […] before, people said to me ‘so you don’t have a BM plan for this weekend?’, they even called me Mahomet and Mohamed couscous,” he says.
The accomplished chef remembers also being the victim of harassment during his schooling. “I have always weighed on average 90 kilos for 1m85, so the physical barrier meant that people did not attack me too much, it was more moral”, confesses Mohamed Cheikh who evokes the case of a comrade who had grabbed him by the jacket to annoy him. “After the second time, I pinned the guy against the wall and told him ‘the next time you do it again, you’re going to remember this’,” he explains.
To read: Racist speech is released at school in France
The Top Chef assures that he has never complained to his parents about these situations. “I wasn’t going to tell them… Obviously, your mom, the only thing she’s going to say is ‘stop, it doesn’t matter, do something else’ but I wanted to do this job, so I kept my mouth shut,” he confides, indicating that his parents “gave everything for my education, and to ensure that I was someone who moved forward.”
Holder of a BEP in hotel and catering professions, cooking option, obtained in 2010, Mohamed Cheikh is today at the head of several restaurants including Manzili (in Paris), Babor (in Paris) and, more recently Meïda (in Saint-Ouen). Married and father of two children, the Franco-Algerian published a recipe book in 2022 entitled “Ma Cuisine Méditerranéenne”.
