A French chef settled in Belgium, Isabelle Arpin won a Michelin star at Restaurant Alexandre (2016) and, the following year, at WY. Today she leads the Auberge du Château de Leignon and supports solidarity projects; her “Arpiness” combines technical rigor and shared joy.
Growing up near Dunkirk, Arpin studied finance before discovering cooking through a summer job: “I enjoyed giving something of myself to the clients; more than the numbers” (2018). After hotel school and beginnings at Auteuil in Ostend, she landed in Brussels.
In 2014 she took over the brigade of the Alexandre restaurant; two years later she was awarded a 2016 Michelin star, proving that passion and discipline can save a restaurant in crisis. In May 2016 she moved on to WY Brussels, Bart De Pooter's showroom-bistro, where she reconfirmed the star in the 2017 edition.
With entrepreneur Dominika Herzig, she opens the restaurant Isabelle Arpin (avenue Louise) in 2019. Then she started La Bonne Étoile catering (2020) and CIAO (2022), a format that supports young Italian chefs. During the pandemic she cooks for Brussels health personnel. Since 2024, she has been signing the Auberge du Château de Leignon table: farm-to-table menus that celebrate Walloon products-brilliant with coffee barley or sabayon with agricultural rum-and pair the château's craft beers.
At the heart of her work is “Arpiness,” a philosophy that privileges empathy and respect for the product: “we don't invent anything; we transform and sublimate what exists.” Committed to social work, Arpin is patron of a cooking school for disadvantaged children in Bali and of the Free Go Solidaire association; she has cooked at charity dinners and in spectacular formats such as Dinner in the Sky.
