My mother made dreadful pizzas and my father excelled at gratins! In 1986 I discovered fine cuisine as a guest at Michel Trama’s: it was a revelation. I completed a school leaving certificate in accountancy and a vocational training certificate in cooking. Then my apprenticeship began.

I went to Le Rouzic, Gauthier’s restaurant in Bordeaux, and I discovered starred cuisine from a chef who was barely known. At Dominique Toulousy’s restaurant, Les Jardins de l'Opéra, I was to learn rigour, how to select produce, service and flavour. At Troisgros in Roanne, I discovered travel, spices and how good and magical it is to be with a united family.
My greatest success: to have got to where I am with my first star and all the more so as my father didn’t believe that cooking could be a profession!

After the departure of Jean-Marie Amat, who was a legendary chef in Bordeaux, I was head hunted from Perpignan where I owned a restaurant. He wasn’t an easy act to follow.
My other challenge: becoming a Relais & Châteaux Grand Chef and meeting up with others like myself. Nowadays I am in the company of those who have been the pioneer chefs over the last 30 years: Bras, Guérard, Trama, Blanc, Troisgros, Roellinger, Gagnaire...

My cuisine offers, in the words of Jean Claude Renard, “a story with personal colouring. About thinking faced with feeling. And it is feeling which wins”.