French chef Paul Marcon celebrates with his girlfriend Noemie Alexanian after winning the 2025 Bocuse d’Or cooking competition. JEFF PACHOUD / AFP
After major investments in a bid to restore its lost national culinary prestige, France savoured victory this week at the world's most prestigious international cooking competition, the Bocuse d'Or.
Paul Marcon, son of the former winner Regis Marcon, clinched the title late on Monday in France's gastronomic capital Lyon, 30 years after his much-garlanded father.
The biennial event, which takes places in front of a boisterous live audience, was founded in 1987 by late French cooking legend Paul Bocuse.
Having seen Scandinavian countries dominate over the last decade, France's team has professionalised and attracted funding from public authorities and private donors in a sign of the importance of the title for national identity.
"It's a childhood dream. It's a source of pride to take France to the top again," a visibly emotional Marcon, 29, told reporters on Monday evening after being hoisted onto the shoulders of his colleagues in his chef's whites.
"Today I hope that we light up the eyes of all the cooks and cooks-to-come in France," he added.
In total, 24 countries competed in the 2025 edition, with the Danish team, winners of the last edition, taking silver and Sweden the bronze medal.
Marcon and his team wowed the judging panel with a pie filled with deer braised in red wine, foie gras and wild mushrooms, accompanied by celery and followed by apple flavoured with French liqueur Chartreuse.
The quality of cooking on display at the Bocuse d'Or is seen by observers as increasing every year as countries invest in their delegations for national marketing purposes or to raise the profile of their gastronomic traditions.
France has won just one medal in the last decade - Davy Tissot having clinched gold in 2021 - with Scandinavian nations maintaining a grip on the top positions with their precise, minimalist and environmentally-conscious cooking.
Until Monday's victory by Marcon, the United States - whose food the French have long looked down on - had won more medals than France over the last 10 years.
"France was navel-gazing," Tissot said recently, "while people around us were moving forward."
Olivia Gregoire, then France's trade and tourism minister, admitted last year that France had been "outstripped by the performance and influence of other countries."
Realising that the country had fallen behind, Team France head Romuald Fassenet began searching for new funds and resources when he took over in 2019 and he found an ally in President Emmanuel Macron, who became the first French leader to visit the Bocuse d'Or.
Around 600 000 euros (almost R12 million) were raised for this year's French team led by Marcon from private donors and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region surrounding Lyon, which is headed by ambitious conservative politician Laurent Wauquiez.
A national centre for gastronomic excellence, called the Paul Bocuse Institute, was formally launched in January in Lyon to train chefs for international cooking competitions.
Macron has also created an "ambassador for French gastronomy", naming former presidential chef Guillaume Gomez to the role last year. - AFP