(Tours) The Michelin guide awarded Monday during its ceremony in Tours a third star to the restaurant Le Gabriel by Jérôme Banctel in Paris and, extremely rare, three stars at once for the reopening of the Table du Castellet, in the Var , led by chef Fabien Ferré.
At 35, Fabien Ferré makes Michelin history and becomes the youngest triple-starred French chef. This is the third time that such a feat –– collecting three stars at once – has happened.
“I’m not good at speeches, a little more in cooking,” declared the chef on stage, coming to collect his reward. “I arrived at Le Castellet 11 years ago. Would I have ever imagined being on this stage with the greatest award? “, he added, visibly moved.
The Castellet restaurant is backed by a very luxurious hotel, a five-star hotel between Toulon and Marseille, which until 2022 was the Provençal kingdom of chef Christophe Bacquié, three stars in 2018, who took the stage Monday evening at the request of Fabien Ferré.
These two three stars, compared to one last year, bring the number of triple-starred addresses in France to 30, after the earlier demotion of the Meilleur family restaurant, La Bouitte, in Savoie.
Fabien Ferré and Jérôme Banctel succeed Alexandre Couillon, chef of the La Marine restaurant in Noirmoutier, on the Atlantic coast of France, the only triple-starred restaurant in 2023.
The 2024 vintage also includes 8 new two-star restaurants, including that of Christophe Cussac, Les Ambassadeurs at the Metropole hotel in Monaco or at the Eiffel Tower, chef Frédéric Anton and his executive chef Kévin Garcia clinch two stars for the first time for the legendary Jules Verne.
No woman is at the top of the list. But a record number of 52 new restaurants obtain a first macaron, with a clear concentration in Paris, the south-east, the south-west and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.