French Food Guides 2006 - Part 4 - Champerand

[John Talbott]

French Food Guides 2006 – Part 4 – Champerand

Rather than spend 23.50 E (Editions Plon), on a new copy of what I regard as a second-level food guide, I will summarize what I have gleaned from a copy given to me by a friend in the spirit of Blanche Dubois, who, too, “always depended on the kindness of strangers.” (Disclosure: I have bought it twice in the past, so I have contributed to M. de Champerard’s royalties.)

Champerard’s Introduction spells out his general theme: that Paris is not the be all and end all of French cuisine and indeed he names as Chef of the Year, Didier Elena of les Crayeres in Reims. He then has a section on Young Chefs (25-35), the students of Ducasse, Passard, Senderens, etc and names a few from Paris (Jean-Francois Piege, Yannick Alleno and Pascal Bardot) but the majority are from outside (Thierry Schwartz, Stéphane Carrade, Fréderic Coursol, Jacques Décoret, David Zuddas, Jean-Marie Baudic, Nicolas Pourcheresse, Jean-Marc Boyer, Alexandre Gauthier, Eric Guérin, Lionel Lévy, Laurent Petit, Nicolas le Bec, Michel Portos, Stéphane Froidevaux + Stephane Laurier.) He names Jacques Decoret of Vichy as the Young Chef of the Year and gives an award ‘ homage of the year to Alain Senderens .