Leading a Legacy

PHOTO BY MATTEO CARASSALE
Executive Chef Emmanuel Pilon stands with Chef Alain Ducasse, the founder of Le Louis XV-Alain Ducasse à l'Hôtel de Paris.

As Alain Ducasse strides to the podium-like centerpiece in the gilded dining room of Le Louis XV at Hôtel de Paris in Monaco, it’s like watching an orchestra conductor. The excited chatter ebbs to a hushed silence as one of the most celebrated figures in the culinary world—who can arguably be credited with leading the design and definition of modern French gastronomy—introduces his team of young chefs to the gathered guests. Like musicians during a performance, each one has a specific role to play in executing a meal that’s nothing short of a chef-d’oeuvre.

A 23-foot-diameter chandelier, crafted from 700 hand-assembled pieces of glass, sparkles overhead, while lights illuminating the neighboring Monte Carlo Casino flood through expansive bay windows. It’s a feast for the senses on every level, but the focal point of the evening is the first dinner of the seasonal series Nectars & Naturalité. During these gala events, guest winemakers share bottles from their personal collections as a celebration of wine and Ducasse’s nature-driven culinary concept, naturalité, introduced a little over a decade ago at Paris’s Hôtel Plaza Athénée.

“We’re paying stronger attention to vegetables, gearing toward more vegetarian cuisine that [allows us] to play with nice wine pairings,” says Ducasse, adding that he has reduced, not removed, animal protein from his menus—and the 20 percent comprising meat and fish is still significant. “It takes a lot of work, a lot of experimentation, to create some of these vegetable-based recipes that taste as close as possible to meat or fish dishes.”

Growing up on a farm in the Landes region of southwestern France, the chef was exposed to seasonality and the quality of produce from a young age. He watched as his parents and grandparents lived off—and respected—the land, sourcing ingredients from the garden and foraging mushrooms in the forest. Ducasse’s grandmother’s cuisine inspired him to pursue his passion professionally. She was the precursor of root-to-stalk cooking, which is the backbone of his naturalité philosophy today—not wasting any part of a vegetable, not even the peelings and trimmings.

For more than 35 years, the chef has been setting one record after the next, currently holding 18 Michelin stars and operating 30 restaurants in 10 different countries—not to mention his previous, decade-long stint running legendary Le Jules Verne at the Eiffel Tower and La Manufacture in Paris, whose handcrafted bean-to-bar chocolates are now sold in outposts from London to Tokyo.

Monte Carlo, and Le Louis XV specifically, is where everything began when, at just 33 years old, Ducasse claimed three coveted Michelin stars: the first time ever for a hotel restaurant. Ducasse explains that Le Louis XV is now one of the most advanced in terms of research and development out of all his venues. “My role is coach and artistic director, guiding chefs as far as they can go. I don’t want to see things here that I’ve seen elsewhere—take your own road, take your own direction.” Through École Ducasse, which he founded less than a decade after his triple-star success at Le Louis XV, the chef can spread his savoir-faire and groundbreaking philosophies on a wider scale.

His protégé, Head Chef Emmanuel Pilon (the fifth generation in a family of chefs), is not much older than Ducasse was when he first took the reins. Studying in France’s gastronomic capital of Lyon alongside two Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (“Best Craftspeople of France”)—Christian Têtedoie and Davy Tissot—Pilon carries pedigree, but it’s his curiosity and inquisitive spirit that sold Ducasse. “He isn’t afraid to keep searching and striving to [push boundaries in the right direction]—that’s the motto he has for the restaurant,” he says of Pilon.

“He has always been ahead of his time—he doesn’t follow trends, he creates them,” Pilon says of his mentor. Pilon has been working alongside Ducasse for 16 years, first arriving at Le Louis XV in 2009 before a stint at Hôtel Plaza Athénee. “Every conversation with the chef is an opportunity to grow, to push our boundaries, to discover new avenues. It is this dynamism, this vision, that shapes us and pushes us to surpass ourselves day after day, and that should be a source of inspiration for the next generation of chefs.”

Ducasse jokes that by sharing his knowledge, he selfishly gains the freedom to continue creating and developing other projects. He’s inspired tout le temps—all the time—by chefs, by products. On a recent menu at Nectars & Naturalité, cardoon (wild artichoke) is an example of an ingredient that’s captured the chef’s attention. “It’s a very specific French vegetable—only the people around Lyon would understand it and its culture, and only they would know what it takes to cook it and have a taste for it,” he says. “If you go to the market anywhere else in the world, you wouldn’t find it, and no one would eat it—only in Lyon.”

Success for Ducasse goes beyond stars, although Le Louis XV still holds three today. He’s always on a quest for something new, and he’s still bold enough to take risks. One of his most ambitious experiments was the 100-day pop-up ADMO at Paris’s Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac Museum, a collaboration with another legend, Spanish chef Albert Adrià of the revolutionary restaurant El Bulli.

“When I don’t have the appetite anymore, when I don’t have any more answers or desires, when I stop being curious, always elsewhere and already elsewhere, I will have to stop,” the chef writes in his memoir Good Taste: A Life of Food and Passion. With a with a major restoration project of the 1930s-era Maison du Peuple near Paris opening as a headquarters and culinary lab in 2026—heralded as a “temple of gastronomy,” and featuring a canteen-style restaurant and his iconic factories—Ducasse shows no sign of slowing down any time soon.