On November 15, the Fooding guide revealed the winners of its 2022 edition at the Bauer stadium in Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis). The approximately 500 VIPs invited to the ceremony therefore had to venture several hundred meters beyond the ring road to attend the awards ceremony. This may be a detail for you, but not for the regulars of this trendy fiesta which was traditionally held in the heart of the capital.
Created by journalist Alexandre Cammas in 2000, first as a special issue for the radio magazine Nova, the guide has long been accused of Parisianism. The latest ranking, a year after the guide was bought by a more powerful competitor, the Michelin, is a game-changer. Of the ten addresses selected by Fooding, only two are located in Paris: the best ice cream (Folderol, run by Jessica Yang and Robert Compagnon, who create fabulous blood orange or sesame sorbets in the 11e arrondissement) and the best wine merchant (Nathan Ratapu, owner of Rerenga Wines, in the 10e arrondissement).
The rest of the selection gives pride of place to the big provincial towns: the Livingston, a brand new Marseille venue run by Valentin Raffali, is crowned “best bar of delicacies”; Baston Pizza, in Perpignan, wins the prize for the best pizza; a “fooding of honor” is awarded to Mathieu Rostaing-Tayard present in Lyon and Biarritz. Very isolated establishments in the countryside have also been awarded, such as the Auberge de la Roche (best restaurant and best style room), a mountain hut completely redeveloped in a village of 800 souls, Valdeblore (Alpes-Maritimes), perched 1,100 meters away in the Mercantour.
“A call of nature”
“We did not seek to specifically put the regions in the spotlight, underlines Christine Doublet, editorial director of Fooding. The prize list is a snapshot of the food scene at one point in time. But it is true that there is a new generation of talented chefs who are going green to enjoy a better quality of life, take their time, take care of their families … which is not always easy in the professions. of mouth. They leave Paris to find the city where they grew up as a kid, or invest in new territories and work as close as possible to their suppliers in a quest for meaning and well-being. “
The three co-founders of Auberge de la Roche fully correspond to this profile. Mickaëlle Chabat, Louis-Philippe Riel (ex-6 Paul Bert) and Alexis Bijaoui (Alain Passard’s sous-chef at L’Arpège) worked in Paris for a long time before they wanted a breath of fresh air.
“There was a call of the wild, summarizes Mickaëlle Chabat. I had a son with my partner Louis-Philippe five years ago. We went back and forth a lot in the Cannes region, where I was born. And then we decided to take the plunge. And when the pandemic started, we told ourselves we were right to leave. ”
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