World’s top chefs work culinary magic in Monaco

His one-time mentor Guy Savoy warmly approved: “The octopus is beautifully tender, there’s a very nice balance of textures and complex flavours — just a little acidity from the Menton lemon.”

Around the corner, the Japanese-born Australian Tetsuya Wakuda marvelled at a stall of orange-capped Caesar’s Mushrooms, a Mediterranean delicacy: “I’ve never tasted these, I’d just heard about them.”

“It’s unbelievable,” said the American Frank Decarlo, before a glistening display of red mullet, octopus, squid and shellfish fished that morning just offshore.

Further along, the pastry chef Pierre Herme bit into a selection of local almonds, approving with a connoisseur’s nod.

“Mindsets have changed, chefs used to be jealous of one another — now they share what they know,” summed up the Neapolitan Gennaro Esposito, whose apron was covered with his fellow chefs’ autographs “as a souvenir”.

Ducasse arrived at the Louis XV in 1987, earning three stars in 1990. He arrived in Paris in 1996, and clinched three stars there too the following year.

In 2005 he became the first chef to hold three stars in three different places by adding New York, a triumph all the sweeter since the restaurant had been panned by critics when it opened five years earlier.

Korean-American chef David Chang — the Korean-American chef named one of the world’s 100 most influential figures by Time Magazine in 2010 — drew crowds for his miso soup of fermented green French lentils, with black truffle.

Today, aged 56, he sits at the helm of a global empire with 21 Michelin stars to his name, and fingers in dozens of pies: from space flights to the Eiffel Tower’s eatery, all under the umbrella of Alain Ducasse Entreprise (ADE).

His Louis XV has trained hundreds of chefs in the Ducasse style, acting like an incubator and feeding a vast global culinary network.

“He’s shown that you can take being a chef to a completely other level and being a really great ambassador at that,” Chang said of his host.

“I’ve never worked for chef Ducasse, but I’ve worked for people that have worked for him. I think people don’t realise the impact he’s had on gastronomy worldwide. He’s set a level.”

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