Schools attended: Ecole Paule Bocuse (cooking school in Lyon)
Achievements: Awarded one Michelin Star at 25 years and again at 29.
Authored a successful book: A chef in Provence (2004).
When award-winning Chef, Edouard Loubet was only 25, his restaurant, Bastide de Capelongue located in Provence, the hilly and picturesque south eastern region of France, was awarded the coveted Michelin star for its hallmark in fine dining.
This was an unprecedented accomplishment for a man that age, especially in France where gastronomy is a religion of sorts.
Then, four years later, he was awarded his second Michelin star. All these only made him work harder, he says.
Loubet grew up on a farm, picking mushrooms and growing food. His father is a chef, his mom, a hotelier.
He married a chef. He admits that formal education didn’t interest him much, so he joined a cooking school for two years as an apprentice where he would spend two weeks in school and two weeks in a kitchen.
“I was good with my hands,” he says with a thick French accent.
Every year, for the past three years, Loubet has been the resident chef at the just ended, Nairobi Serena Hotel’s French Week, an exquisite culinary experience at their Mandhari Restaurant.
The event showcases an elaborate eight-course dining culinary jamboree where the “local” menu is fused with French cuisine. A culinary riot.
We dined with Loubet, who owns two restaurants in France, and as he walked us down the menu, he reveled into an education of food with a passion that gives food – and he – a life of its own.
Asked how he defines himself as a chef, he says with a fire burning in his eyes, “I’m the gardener of my garden, I’m the chef of my kitchen and the hunter of my woods.”
Then he smiles, a bullish smile that almost diffuses the deserved cockiness that piggybacks on that statement.
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