Storyteller of starry flavors

Jacques Decoret

Don’t expect from Jacques Decoret a verb full of temperament and a body that imposes itself. This is probably the expression of someone who prefers to be at the piano rather than playing the score in conversations. However, the starred chef is a shy man who eventually lets go, simply out of love for his profession.

At age 50

Jacques Decoret has a rather exquisite track record and a youthfulness in rubbing shoulders with starred chefs: Troisgros, Passard, Lorain, Marcon. After having forged his soul in these renowned kitchens, at age 30, the desire to settle down arises: Paris, elsewhere or on another continent? Finally, Jacques Decoret returned to his native land. “It is not said enough that the one is from here! When we talk about our Bourbonnais Mountain, people are surprised. They think we are foreign.”

I have always lived for food. From my first restaurant, I wanted to tell an unusual story. I was classified in different families: playful cuisine, molecular cuisine. I have never claimed to be one of them.

Jacques Decoret

A star in Vichy

Realization

So it was Vichy with the opening of afirst restaurant on Rue de Paris. “When we looked at the Michelin, Vichy no longer had a starred restaurant. So we said to ourselves, why not us? Ten years in this first place marked,in 2000, by the first Michelin star and the name of Decoret in the gastronomy guides. Then “With Martine, my wife, we felt like a bigger shell. The Vichy town hall offered us different locations but finally, it wasthe chalet, rue du Parc.” In 2008, the chef can express himself in this new space of 35 covers. In 2010, five Relais et Châteaux rooms completed the gastronomic offering.

The restaurant

At a glance

His kitchen

The Maison Decoret is now established in its Vichy setting. The clientele is captivated by its gustatory creations. For Jacques Decoret maintains his line: quality products, increasingly local and seasonal. “I start with a local product and then it’s a culinary journey. I refocus on the material even if I add a citrus fruit, a seaweed from Japan. My main theme is to develop a territory. Like the design of a dessert with Vichy pastille. “In the word cook, you have to understand cooking. Cooking to obtain more and more a cuisine of taste. This requires a lot of time, simmering, decoctions.

From the local

In the oven and in the garden

Whether on the plant roof set up on the restaurant or in the gardens and orchards maintained by the whole family on the Montagne Bourbonnaise in St Pierre Laval and Busset, Jacques and Martine Decoret produce some of the vegetables used in the kitchen: beets, carrots, tomatoes, vitelotte potatoes, leeks, chard, aromatic herbs, parsley, burnet, rosemary… For everything else Jacques Decoret has forged real partnerships with local producers: Les jardins de Cocagne in Aronnes, Ferme Gagnol in Chateldon (asparagus and strawberries in the field), La pisciculture du Moulin Piat in Ferrières-sur-Sichon for its Fario trout and Arctic char… But the list is long and we could not name them all.

Jacques Decoret at a Fario trout breeder in the Bourbonnaise Mountain

Go further

Pursuing the escape

Gourmet rally in the Bourbonnaise Mountains

To Moroccans

A dynasty of confectioners

Escape to the Bourbonnaise Mountains