Globetrotting French food event aims to usher in new generation of young chefs
In a country where chefs and restaurants are categorized into a tidy hierarchy dictated mostly by Michelin stars, heredity and the test of time comes a food festival that rejects the old guard of tall chef hats, white-gloved service and excess tableware.
Created by French food journalist Luc Dubanchet, Omnivore has become a major food event designed to serve as a stark contrast to traditional French attitudes about high end haute cuisine.
This year, what used to be an exclusively French event has gone international with stops that will include cities like Brussels, Moscow, Copenhagen and Shanghai. This week, the tour stops in Paris, the event's new ground zero. Previously the festival was organized out of Le Havre in Normandy.
Chefs participating in the international event are young, dynamic, and irreverent and they refuse to subscribe to the old rules or codes of gastronomy and instead choose to blaze their own trail, he says.
Chef Grégory Marchand of Parisian eatery Frenchie, for example, balks at the notion of tables groaning with excess tableware, glasses and cutlery in which a different fork and knife are needed for each course.
Like the tables, menus are equally sparse with just two options for appetizers and mains.
And unlike Michelin-starred restaurants which flaunt their worth by charging exorbitant prices, a four-course meal of appetizer, main, cheese and dessert at Frenchie is €45.
In an effort to showcase the young unknowns, a big part of the Omnivore festival is the irreverently sassy series F*** Dinners in which local French chefs will be paired with their international counterparts invited from countries around the world including Singapore, Australia, the US and the UK.
Marchand, for instance, will host F*** Dinner with Montreal chef Derek Dammann of DNA at his restaurant on March 12.
Aside from dinners hosted throughout the city, visitors can also watch a brigade of chefs show off their chops at Masterclass cooking demos. In Paris, the demos will take place at the Maison de la Mutualité in the 5th district.
The cheeky dinner name was given in homage to New York chef David Chang who expressed his enthusiasm for the concept in an expletive-laced outburst.
Omnivore Paris kicks off March 11 - 13 before moving on to Brussels.
