Guest of Culture Médias, on Europe 1, Stéphane Rotenberg, the presenter of Top Chef, spoke about some notable novelties of the next season, broadcast on Wednesday evening on M6. Among them, the arrival of chef Paul Pairet, crowned best restaurateur in the world in 2018. "A character apart", estimated by the production as being most likely to replace chef Jean-François Piège, who decided to shoot the page after ten years on the jury.

INTERVIEW

New, but above all a new member of the jury. Paul Pairet, crowned best restaurateur in the world in 2018, is the latest recruit for the next season of Top Chef. "It was not easy to replace Jean-François Piège, so someone needed to be up to the task," said Stéphane Rotenberg, the program's presenter, at the microphone of Europe 1. Completing the team formed by Hélène Darroze, Philippe Etchebest and Michel Sarran, Paul Pairet comes to bring to the jury a certain touch of eccentricity. In China for several years, he opened restaurants there, including Ultraviolet, in Shanghai, which allowed him to be crowned by "Les Grandes Tables du Monde", an award which earned him prestigious fame all over the world.

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"A character apart"

The legend, told about this extraordinary restaurant, says that the guests - who cannot be more than ten per evening - are taken in secret to the restaurant which nobody except one driver in Shanghai knows the address. Credible or not? For Stéphane Rotenberg, no importance. "What is important is what happens on the plate," he says, highlighting the work done by Paul Pairet on "olfactory sensations and" light projections ".

"He is a character apart, he has his world," adds Stéphane Rotenberg. This world, Paul Pairet has already had the opportunity to impose it in the previous issue of Top Chef. He then asked the candidates to produce his "signature" dish: the famous "mirror dish". Objective: make two plates that are perfectly identical visually, but one being salty, the other sweet.

Great chef, but new to television

It started again this year. "We took a bit offbeat, a little crazy chefs, who explode the codes of cooking," says Stéphane Rotenberg. Paul Pairet is, and he will be a juror. Little taste of what the candidates had to go through, under his instructions: make a condensed recipe. One of the participants therefore proposed condensing Bolognese pasta.

"It's daring," enthuses Stéphane Rotenberg. "We are always surprised when we have chefs who break the codes", he says, with reference to Paul Pairet, and confessing, smile to the lips that the new chef - who, failing to have a chef's hat, always wears a cap screwed on the head -, was "gently hazed by the other chiefs". "He is a great chef. He is a beginner in television, but everything is going well."