World´s best chef starts again with takeaway soup

PARIS: Two months ago Guy Savoy was at the very top of the gastronomic tree. His Paris flagship restaurant had yet again been hailed as the best in the world by La Liste, with tables booked months in advance. Then the coronavirus came, closing restaurants across the planet. Now the three-star Michelin chef is making soup that you can heat up at home in your microwave. Not any old soup, of course, but Savoy´s legendary artichoke soup with truffles, which comes delivered with a brioche speckled with mushrooms and truffles to dip into it. “It breaks my heart to see a place that is usually so animated at lunchtime empty,” Savoy told AFP, as he surveyed his elegant dining room at la Monnaie de Paris overlooking the River Seine and the Louvre museum. Its kitchens lie mostly empty, with their fridge doors open, with only the patisserie team hard at work preparing brioches and mousse au chocolat and rice pudding for takeaway. “These old-fashioned recipes bring us the comfort we need in these difficult times,” Savoy said. Like a host of top French chefs including his great friend and rival Alain Ducasse, Savoy has started doing home deliveries because his well-heeled clients can no longer come to him. “Looked at from an economic point of view, what we are doing does not hold up,” Savoy said, but it was important to keep in contact with his public.