Paris, Lille, Marseille, but also Tencin, Martigues, and Locronan. Former Top Chef candidates now work all over France. While season 11 of the famous culinary show is launched on Wednesday evening on M6, Europe 1 has found traces of the chefs who have been in the contest kitchens for the past ten years.
To draw up the map, we checked the current position of more than 140 ex-candidates. Each benchmark corresponds to a restaurant. We have represented in the same way an establishment of which the ex-candidate is the owner or chef. The same chef can therefore appear several times, if, like Norbert Tarayre and Juan Arbelaez (season 5), he has opened several over the years. 105 restaurants appear on the map, for 71 chefs listed. Former candidates who have become caterers or private chefs, or those working outside Europe, are not shown on the card. The red dots correspond to the 14 candidates who obtained a Michelin star in the 2020 edition, French or not.
>> Find the 105 restaurants where former Top Chef candidates officiate, with each name, address and website:
Of the 105 restaurants listed, half are located in the Paris region, including 44 in inner Paris. A significant proportion, partly due to former candidates who opened several restaurants, sometimes under the same brand, in the capital. Pierre Sang Boyer (season 2) has five, Julien Duboué (season 5) has four, and Thibault Sombardier (season 5) six. Jean Imbert, one of the most notable former candidates of the competition (season 3), is in charge of four restaurants.
Three new Michelin stars in 2020
Most of the former candidates chose to stay cooking in France. The others have often simply returned to their country of origin, such as the Belgians Julien Wauthier (season 8), Jean-Philippe Watteyne (season 4), and Jeremy Vandernoot (season 8), or the Dutch chef Joris Bijdendijk, based in Amsterdam .
Of the 14 Michelin-starred chefs, three have just received the precious macaroon at the end of January 2020. Tabata Mey (season 3) has been awarded for its Lyonnais restaurant Les Apothicaires. Kelly Rangama (season 8) was distinguished for the Faham, opened eight months ago in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. Third winner: Adrien Descoul (season 8) head of Origin, in Puy-de-Dôme. Stéphanie Le Quellec, the big winner of season 2 of the show, won her second Michelin star for her Parisian restaurant La Scène. A very feminine record, especially when compared to the number of women listed on the map: only 12, out of the 71 former candidates.