Among France's most mediatic chefs, Cyril Lignac is currently at the helm of nine restaurants and seven bakeries, a count that never stops increasing, even abroad. But the second Michelin star for him never came. “And when I realized the injustice, I chose to leave the competition.”
The opinion
In the field of food critique, the extent of the dust-ups provides an accurate measure of how influential those who have raised them are. Above them all, of course, stands the high tribunal called Michelin, as authoritative for the uniqueness of its means as it is controversial (and it couldn't be any other way) for its unappealable rulings.
Cyril Lignac, a French chef who rose to popularity thanks to a TV show he undertook at the time of the pandemic, “Tous en cuisine,” in which he divulged recipes, also talks about it. The son of a nurse and a cabinetmaker, after hotel school he completed his apprenticeship with starred chef Nicole Fagegaltier and shadowed Alain Passard before opening his own restaurant at age 28, Michelin-starred after seven years. Now at the head of nine establishments and seven bakeries, he has just opened his second patisserie in Saint-Tropez and doubled his restaurant Le Bar des Prés in London, soon to be in Dubai.
"I am full of dreams, and when I finish a project, I feel like starting another one. Sometimes I am told that it is a forward flight. It's not that I can't stop, but as they say, he who does not advance goes backward. Without being too pushy, I feel it is important to have projects to not fall asleep and to stimulate my teams," he told Le Figaro.
"I live in fear that things will not work out. When you are an entrepreneur and your employees are counting on you, you are obliged to be on your toes. Life is not a long quiet river, there is purchasing power, increased expenses.... I am afraid, but I put actions in place. The day I have neither fears nor doubts, I will be at the end of my journey." Lignac is also a perfectionist, especially with himself, beloved by largely historical collaborators. He has certainly benefited from his television career, launching some 20 broadcasts on M6, with an enviable popular sense of the medium (the next one will be “Ma recette est la meillèure de France”), but he has never lost his grounding in the industry.
The second Michelin star, however, never came, even though many chefs baptized on his shows have been promoted by the food guide. "There is a feeling that hurts me in the deepest part of my soul: unfairness. Michelin is overflowing with injustice, and not only in my case. They do as they want because there are no rules. My mother used to tell me: the most annoyed people leave. So I left, I quit."
