the French team refines the last details around Paul Marcon

Thirty years after his father Régis Marcon, chef Paul Marcon hopes to follow in his footsteps and win the 2025 Bocuse d’Or in Lyon. He has a motivated and present team around him, Team France, to make this dream a reality.

Bring together 24 chefs from around the world, among the most promising in their country, and ask them to prepare two dishes in 5 hours 35 minutes on an imposed theme in the heart of an 8,000 m2 arena in Lyon: the Bocuse d’Or 2025 is approaching.

Monday January 27, it is the chef Paul Marcon who will defend the colors of France in public. He won’t be alone. Around him, for months, a whole team led by Romuald Fassenet, Meilleur Ouvrier de France, starred chef and president of Team France for the Bocuse d’Or. “The state of mind is very good. The last preparations before this weekend, the last training sessions, everything is going as planned, everything is under control. It really bodes well.”

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For the selected chef, Team France provides support throughout the preparation for the different stages of the competition. It offers unique and personalized support: “There are people who work around reflection, technique, mentality, physics. It’s not just cooking, it’s a whole set of things that make this coordination. We finance a team, we finance a premises, we finance the means to prepare as best as possible. We have everything we need to prepare, like a training center,” explains Romuald Fassenet.

Winner of the Bocuse d’Or France, Paul Marcon will represent France at the final of the Bocuse d’Or with his commis Camille Pigot who will be at his side in the box, both accompanied by the chef Meilleur Ouvrier de France Christophe Quantin as official coach. “It is a competition where the team is mobilized for 18 months. It’s a preparation that’s gaining momentum. We have been in place since September with the first subjects arriving at the beginning of October”says Romuald Fassenet.

For 5.5 hours, the candidates will have to work on the two legendary tests of the competition: the platter theme and the plate theme, highlighting local products. For the platter theme, they will have to cook venison, foie gras and tea. “Once we have found what we want to do, once we have thought about what we want to do, then we have to coordinate it in time and space. The 5.5 hours cannot be reduced, like the work space, the box that we will have on the day of the competition. We set up a box for training. We work on recipes, trials, tests, tastes, ideas, what we want to convey, the subject, the rules, the decor, the aesthetic… We have to combine everything to find the best dish possible. We build all these moments until the moment when it’s there, we’re going to set out to make our blanks. We are going to put ourselves in competition mode to fit everything within 5h30”, explains Romuald Fassenet.

The main piece of the tray, the deer must be worked in its entirety in 3 pieces, without waste or leftovers. It will be accompanied by three toppings: a crispy pie 20 cm in diameter, composed of venison shoulder and foie gras, a vegetable topping made solely from fruits linked to the candidate’s country. A third garnish will be served separately including 16 two-tone ravioli filled with a loose stuffing and a clarified venison broth flavored with tea. For the plate theme, the candidates will be asked to sublimate the celery (branch and root), the lean, as well as the lobster with creativity and daring highlighting the flavors of the country of each candidate. Paul Marcon will have to cook a duo of celery root and branch with leaves, lean meat and lobster completed with a hot sabayon made without a siphon.

“Since the end of December, we have been doing a blank every 2 days”explains the president of Team France. “That means that every other day, we have to prepare the weighings, the research, the molds and the shapes so that everything works on the day of the match. We repeat the scales, we repeat the technical phases, we adjust the equipment, we adjust the weights, we adjust the flavors, we repeat the gestures so that the ballet becomes better and better. It’s a big funnel where we put everything together and then little by little, we refine it so that on the big day, we come out with the most beautiful dish.”

Several objectives are sought, worked on, adjusted. “The positioning, the gestures, the technicality, the taste of course, the decoration, the presentation, the size, the shapes, the temperatures, the seasonings and what we want to say, the communication we want to give, the images , the menu that we will print for the big day, combined with the physical, mental and psychological state of the team.”

Of Auvergne origin, Paul Marcon grew up in the kitchens of Saint-Bonnet-le-Froid in Haute-Loire, alongside his father, the starred chef Régis Marcon. He passed on his passion to her: “Paul’s strong point is that he has dexterity, finesse, he’s a little opera rat, I was going to say. He has an elegance, he has a finesse in his work, he exudes something so captivating that it’s astonishing. It looks like a ballet of relentless fluidity. It’s beautiful to see. What his cuisine exudes is this conviction of good, clean, neat, of a presentation with pure readability. He has a purity in his presentations which allows you to immediately understand what you are going to eat,” explains Romuald Fassenet.

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The technical subject seems calibrated for him: “The new boss of the competition brings back a little technicality and kitchen work with constraints and rules that are a little more closed. For example, there are these crispy pies measuring 20 cm by 6. That gives a little less freedom. Cooking 2 confit venison shoulders to integrate them into this pie, without adding other proteins, provides another additional technique. We like it because it’s our cuisine, because it’s our way of doing things and it suits us”welcomes the chef.

In addition to his role as team president, Romuald Fassenet is also one of the jurors: “I’m going to be a jury on both days, we’re going to judge 24 dishes, 12 on the first day, 12 on the second. Either I will be the fish jury or the meat dish jury. Temperature is part of the instructions, as are textures, cooking, seasonings and aesthetics. It’s an aesthetic competition but behind it, we have to find taste. Afterwards, the particularity is that there are still 2 themes where the culture of the country must be found on the plate, notably in the fruit garnish which must be of identity. There are many points that will be important to judge and we have to be professional. Everyone comes to fight and everyone must be judged very professionally so that everyone is in their place. We will be sensitive to this emotion that we have when tasting. Ultimately, the dish that will win is the one that takes us on board!”

The competition is tough and high level, “but we are armed”he reassures. “Norway, Denmark and Sweden, for me, are the countries that come to win, but there are always underdogs like Singapore. I think the Singapore team will certainly be talked about. There are the English, there are always the Americans who hope to reverse the trend.” An additional challenge for Paul Marcon: his father won the Bocuse d’Or 30 years ago, in 1995. “Our goal is to write history. We have Paul and the story of his father, but we also have the story of our president Serge Vieira, who left a year and a half ago, who won 20 years ago. We are all concerned about wanting to include France in the rankings for this 2025 edition. We have things to write.”

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To train the chefs of tomorrow, Team France is opening a center of excellence in Lyon, which will bring together all the professional corporations for future competitions.