Since 1987, the prestigious Bocuse d’Or competition has been the playground for the world’s best chefs. But also a growing tool of political influence for countries whose gastronomies are sharpening, competing with French hegemony.
Champs-Elysées, November 27, at Pavillon Ledoyen, restaurant of three-star chef Yannick Alléno. “Team France” is giving a reception to thank the donors who have financed the training of French candidate Paul Marcon, son of three-star chef Régis Marcon, for 15 months.
The Bocuse d’Or, “it’s the elite”, “the Olympic Games of cooking”, enthuses Romuald Fassenet, best worker in France and president of “Team France”, met by AFP at this occasion.
On January 26 and 27, for more than five hours, the finalists will compete in front of the public at Sirha, the World Food and Gastronomy Trade Fair, in Lyon.
The level of this marathon competition, created by Paul Bocuse, continues to increase. To design their dishes, the chefs work with designers and scientists.
The French hold, for the moment, the record for victories. But in recent years, the Nordic countries, which promote a more minimalist gastronomy, adapted to ecological issues, have taken the lion’s share.
– “Make it shine” –
“France was looking at its navel” but “the people around them have moved forward,” says Davy Tissot, Bocuse d’Or 2021.
The Scandinavian countries were the first to invest massively in training young people to win the events. The Danish candidate, Sebastian Holberg Svendsgaard, whose country won the last edition, was assistant to two previous Bocuse d’Or contenders and a member of the junior teams.
“They understood that gastronomy was a real subject” to “make” their countries shine “other than through the fjords and the Northern Lights,” continues Mr. Tissot.
In the 1990s, French candidates “trained at night,” he whispers.
And until 2019, when Romuald Fassenet took over “Team France”, “there was not even a (cutting) board, not a recipe”, says the latter.
“Today, we have the means” and “social security for the clerk,” he welcomes. Six hundred thousand euros of private funding and funding from the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region were raised to dedicate Paul Marcon and his team full time to the preparation of the tests, the required products of which are venison, foie gras, tea, celery, etc.
A “Clairefontaine of gastronomy” (named after the hopes center dedicated to football), a center dedicated to the training of French food professionals for international competitions, was initiated in 2022 and will be officially launched on Wednesday.
– “French Bashing” –
A subject taken seriously at the top of the State. Emmanuel Macron was the first head of state to attend the competition, in 2021, and will still follow the final “very closely”, according to Guillaume Gomez, former chef of the Elysée kitchens and personal representative of the President in matters of gastronomy.
“France is practicing gastrodiplomacy through this competition,” explains Vincent Marcilhac, lecturer in food geography at Cergy Paris University. A neologism which represents the efforts of countries to promote their cuisine, a tool of tourist “soft power” (diplomacy of influence).
Operations in embassies, “haute gastronomy plan”… France is pulling out all the stops to counter a “French Bashing” on a supposed decline in French cuisine, born in 2003 in the context of Paris’ opposition to the war in Iraq, to “weaken its international soft power”, according to Mr. Marcilhac.
“The Eiffel Tower or the castles of the Loire are very beautiful. But is it more beautiful than the pyramids of Egypt?” asks Guillaume Gomez.
“What makes the difference is the Camembert, the champagne, the red wine, the macaron, the croissant.”
Because in the world’s leading tourist destination, catering is not just the symbol of an art of living but an economic sector which represents 35.6 billion euros in turnover.
France in gastronomy, “it’s like Brazil in football, we want to beat it”, dares Romuald Fassenet, who emphasizes that French kitchens train a lot of foreign chefs.
“Today, we are not sitting on our laurels.”
