Australia, Sydney
Sydney is very excited to welcome 3 star Michelin Chef Jacques Marcon – from the Haute Loire region of France, about 100km south-east of Lyon – for a three weeks series of events. Relais & Châteaux invites you to savour the pure essence of the French mountains with a special dinner in Sydney created by three Michelin starred chef Jacques Marcon,
Relais & Châteaux and Etihad Airways, with the help of Atout France, have brought Jacques to Australia. He will cook a five-course meal celebrating his very specific local terroir, for diners at Relais & Châteaux’s only Sydney hotel, Jonah’s Whale Beach, on Thursday, November 24. Tickets $195 all inclusive. There’s only a small number of tickets set aside for this event, so be quick to book your place for this marvellous opportunity.
For the dinner at Jonah’s, Jacques and his Sous Chef Christophe Gasper will share with guests their wisdom of how to draw inspiration and find unexpected produce in the local environment – from herbs to berries, locally grown vegetables and of course, mushrooms.
They will cook alongside Jonah’s stellar new Executive Chef Alfonso Ales, who recently gained one hat in the Sydney Good Food Guide
Tickets
Tickets are $195: five-course dinner with Pommery Champagne and matching wines included. For tickets phone Jonah’s on +61 2 9974 5599.
www.jonahs.com.au
Tower Lodge in the Hunter Valley is then hosting a dinner on the Saturday night 26th November with Chef Marcon cooking a degustation. Guests can overnight at the Lodge if they choose.
About Chef Jacques Marcon
Jacques hails from the Restaurant Regis & Jacques Marcon, which has presided over a tiny village in the Rhone Valley called Saint Bonnet-le-Froid for more than 30 years. Here Jacques and his father, Regis, have industriously worked, far from the spotlight, to reinvent modern French cuisine by drawing on the flavours of their local terroir in the most inventive of ways. As executive chef, Jacques has become one of France’s most celebrated chefs and young stars of cuisine. The restaurant was awarded a third star in the Michelin Guide.
Here, each season the natural environment takes the place of honour, both in the surrounding countryside and on the plate. This unassuming father and son team have a thirty-year tradition of foraging in the wilderness surrounding their village. Here, the terroir, the forests, the mountain air of Le Puy-en-Velay inform the very flavours of each dish.
The pair also share an obsession with mushrooms – in fact, they are the emblem of the restaurant – which are championed during the annual Mushroom Festival that attracts more than 20,000 visitors to the village of only 200 inhabitants.
In the undergrowth of the forests near their restaurant, they uncover myriad wild, native mushroom varieties – russula mustelina with its fresh hazelnut taste, the lactarius fuscus with its coconut-like aromas and the clitocybe odora with its aniseed flavours.
In summer, the meadows are carpeted with forgotten flowers – who would imagine adderwort, victory onion, willowherb, bracken, shepherd’s purse could end up flavouring a dish?
The restaurant’s cuisine in infused with the history of France – Le Puy green lentils, chestnuts, char, mushroom – and defines its future.
