Revealed by the show “Top chef”, Mory Sacko has become the new darling of French gastronomy with his dishes which combine French and African cuisine enhanced with flavors from Japan. This tall two-metre boy, always laughing and happy, from a family of nine children, strives to keep his feet on the ground despite the multiple requests he receives.
I wouldn’t have gotten here if…
…If I hadn’t had the TV and hadn’t been interested in what was on it. My two passions came from this box: Japan through animated manga and the world of palaces and hotels that I discovered through reports that fascinated me. Television, which today has a bad press, was for me a window onto worlds that I did not know. Until then, my life consisted of my family, my neighborhood, my city, football.
Was television very present in your home?
My mother turned it on when she couldn’t take it anymore, when we were playing football in the hallway, when we started playing catch and when we broke a light bulb for the third time. She would make us sit in front of the TV in the living room to find some peace and quiet and do what she had to do.
You are the sixth in a family of nine children, that was a lot of people to manage…
When my father arrived from Mali in 1990 to work in France, he landed in Tournan-en-Brie, in Seine-et-Marne. An uncle lived not far away. It’s a quiet place, the last town before the countryside, a town on a human scale with a lot of diversity, public housing, it seemed ideal for a family. On Saturdays, we could enjoy Paris, only thirty minutes by train.
My parents already had five children when my mother joined them in 1991. I was born the following year, in 1992, then my little brother was born in turn. The elders joined us later, thanks to family reunification. It happened in stages. We had to find a larger apartment to accommodate my two older brothers and then my three older sisters, three more years later. My parents then had their last two daughters. There is a twenty year gap between the tallest and the smallest. We all found each other late, which means we benefit a lot from each other now.
What did your parents do?
My father spent his entire career in construction, he got up at 6:30 a.m. and came home at 7:30 p.m. My mother took care of us and, at the end of the day, she went to clean offices in the area. industrial. It’s a typical immigration story. My parents had dreams of a better life for their children and themselves. They succeeded with flying colors. They didn’t give up on us, they raised us with very strong values that I will keep all my life. They educated us in pride in work, humility, respect for elders.
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