She has come a long way since her participation in the famous M6 culinary competition. In 2016, during the seventh season of Top chefviewers discovered Coline Faulquier. Throughout the adventure, she evolved – until arriving in the final against Xavier Pincemin, crowned winner – alongside Philippe Etchebest, Hélène Darroze, Jean-François Piège and Michel Sarran, replaced in 2022 by Glenn Viel. And many years later, the young chef was able to count on the support of one of the brigade leaders, as told in her portrait in Release this Wednesday, February 16, 2022.
After Top chef, Coline Faulquier embarked on a big project with her companion at the time. “I followed my son’s father: we opened a restaurant in a shed in the northern districts of Marseille“, she confides. But the pretty 32-year-old blonde is not happy. After a time behind the stove, she “finally find the courage to [se] separate from [son] companion“. The ex-couple continued to work together for two years, until the 32-year-old chef “regains [sa] freedom“.
Faced with the break, the ex-candidate of Top chef had only one certainty, and it concerned his son Enzo, born in 2013: “I didn’t want him to be disturbed by the situation so in ten days I moved and found a stable situation.“But while she is looking for a new position, nothing comes. It was during a discussion with Michel Sarran that Coline Faulquier saw her life change dramatically.”He was categorical: according to him, I absolutely had to open my own restaurantso as not to be accountable to anyone“, she recalls.
Michel Sarran, the lucky star of Coline Faulquier
The young chef finds the premises of her dreams but fears that she will not be able to compete with other investors. And it is at this moment that the famous chef from Toulouse intervenes as a good fairy. “If the only problem is money, I’ll lend it to you“, he throws to her on the phone. “I was very touched by this gesturemoreover coming from someone I hadn’t seen too much since the show“, says Coline Faulquier, who also benefited some time later from the financial assistance of a friend. Information (until then kept secret) revealed three years after the opening of the restaurant in 2019.
Thanks to Michel Sarran, it opens Signature, in the eighth arrondissement of Marseille. And very quickly, the establishment knows the expected success! Indeed, in January 2021, the young woman, already crowned by Gault & Millau twice (Young talent in 2017 then Hope PACA in 2018) won his first Michelin star ! “Cooking is my whole life. Be a mother tooshe says. I was once told that between being a chef or a mother, you had to choose. I refuse this dilemma so I give my all to work, but I close the restaurant every weekend to be with my son.“Today, she hopes to continue at the pace of”a child, a star, a child, a star“, just that !