Meet the Master

Alain Ducasse was born in Southwest France in 1956. He started cooking in 1972 with an apprenticeship at Pavillon Landais restaurant in Soustons. From there, he worked up the ranks in various kitchens, landing at Moulin de Mougins under Roger Vergé. He won his first two stars at La Terrasse in Juan-les-Pins in 1984. His first three-star restaurant was Monaco’s Le Louis XV. In 2005 he became the first chef to have three restaurants with three stars at the same time.

Alain Ducasse is the original gentleman chef. A man to whom good manners matter as much as Michelin stars, with a sense of timeless elegance that seems to come easy to well-bred French men. Indeed, at 62, he still cuts a fine silhouette in an immaculate black suit, his trademark Oliver Peoples spectacles and a white shirt with a collar as crisp as the linen in his three-star restaurant at the Dorchester Hotel, his main London base since 2007. Passing him in the hotel lobby, he’s easily mistaken for a high-level international dignitary or businessman, which, managing a 50-restaurant empire spanning seven countries on three continents, isn’t too far from the truth.

Like a successful UN ambassador, Mr Ducasse has managed to roll out ideas that are relevant anywhere in the world. He was the first chef to hold three Michelin stars at three restaurants, in three countries and, aged 33, became the youngest chef to win three himself. His brand of cooking and restaurant design has always favoured the avant-garde, seemingly light years ahead of its time in terms of conception and device. ‘I have always been interested in the relationship and harmony between the content and container,’ he says in melodic, heavily accented English. ‘The food is just one element of any dinner. I travel a lot to Japan and they understand this perfectly. In my restaurants, we try to appreciate that what goes on around the food is as important as the food itself – the objects, the plates, the colours, the lights – all have an impact. At one of my next restaurants, we will not have any plates. We like to look to the future.’ Indeed, in 2015 Ducasse was the first chef to devise food for astronauts for the menu at the International Space Station. They could choose from baby chicken in lemon sauce, or potato and tomato mille-feuilles with gnocchi. Arguably the even bigger achievement than producing food without bacteria, moisture or crumbs that would float away in zero gravity was having them approved and certified by every nation with a space program – Ducasse the diplomat strikes again.

If he hadn’t been a chef, Mr Ducasse would have been an ‘architect or traveller’. With a globetrotting career cooking in and designing the best restaurants in the world, you could argue that he has rolled all three into one. Though his real progression began in 1984 with an incident so harrowing, it forced him to re-evaluate his life and everything that he was doing. Travelling by helicopter between Courchevel and St Tropez, the aircraft encountered bad weather and was forced to drop below the clouds. Ducasse saw a mountain appear and the altimeter spin in the pilot’s desperate bid for the sky. He didn’t make it. The helicopter ploughed into the mountainside killing the four other passengers, but casting Ducasse through a hatch to be suspended in the trees, where he hung for six hours. One can only imagine that such a situation gives adequate time for introspection. He had plenty more time for contemplation in hospital undergoing 15 operations. It was three years before he was able to walk unassisted again.

Mr Ducasse says that his time in hospital taught him to delegate. Earlier in 1984 he had received his first two Michelin stars and he intended to keep them. While convalescing he spent hour upon hour on the phone, dictating everything he had learnt to his head chef. In an era of FaceTime with more chef collaborations and duets than a Nineties mix tape, this kind of information-sharing doesn’t seem unusual. Though in the Eighties – particularly in France – chefs kept a close guard of recipes, technique twists and secrets. Quite often, they’d take them to the grave. Ducasse, having been so close to his own, chose to share. And his art of managing remotely was born.

The accolades, stars and successful restaurants soon followed and today, Ducasse’s company numbers around 2,000 employees. How does he see his current role and how can he keep a handle on so many international enterprises?
‘I do the dreaming,’ he says, wistfully. ‘I look at what we do like making music. All of my chefs have to learn to read our music in order to play, but how they compose that music is up to them.’

And Ducasse’s music has gone multi-platinum. Aside from the restaurants, he has a range of homewares with Alessi, cookery schools, consultancies and his most recent UK enterprise, Le Chocolat Alain Ducasse at the new Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross. The shop sells the macarons, flavoured ganaches and pralines served in his restaurants and the most wonderful single- origin chocolate bars, all delivered by train each day from his Parisian workshop. Not just has his second album sold, but his third, fourth and fifth. Is it time for a Greatest Hits? ‘I still have plenty more restaurants in my head. We still have a lot of work to do across the world. Some people are over-fed; lots of us are under-fed – as long as this balance is not addressed there is still work for us to do.’

When Ducasse refurbished his restaurant in Paris at Hotel Plaza Athénée in 2014, he set himself a challenge to achieve high gastronomy with less protein, sugar, salt and fat. ‘The success here has been very pleasing. We now have three stars, so it goes to show that by concentrating the flavours in different ways, using good grains, less meat, more vegetables and by employing bitterness, acidity and unexpected tastes, quality can be achieved.’ It’s this blueprint that many chefs have started to follow. Again, he is ahead of the curve.

‘The world is getting smaller,’ he says. ‘The concept of “the table” has the capacity to bring different opinions and cultures together. Food is the social cement and has the potential for binding international relationships that at the moment are so fragile. I want to start a connection with Unesco about “feeding peace” to bring people together through food.’ That role as a UN envoy beckons.

It wasn’t so long ago that Ducasse was asked to prepare a meal for Donald Trump at the Palace of Versailles. Was it hard to decide what to cook? ‘Whenever we host someone like the President, we want to please, so we enquired with Mr Trump for his likes and dislikes.’ Surely a hamburger wouldn’t show the chef’s full capabilities? ‘Let’s just say that he was very happy with the meal, but it was me who selected the menu, anyway,’ he laughs. ‘In fact, it might just be the only time when Mr Trump is not the boss.’ A career in diplomacy doesn’t look so far off.