Yannick Alléno's Love For French Cuisine Stems From Longtime Traditions

For Chef Yannick Alléno, his quest to push the limits of culinary recipes while preserving honored traditions has made him one of the most award-winning chefs in the industry. Having trained with and cooked alongside master French chefs, Alléno has since immersed himself in the respected culinary style while putting his own spin on tried-and-true dishes. From a young age, Alléno was surrounded by the elegance and refinement that has come to characterize French cooking. To Country & Town House, Alléno acknowledges his continued respect for French cuisine while admitting his efforts to evolve more traditionally-known recipes. 

When creating menus of his own, Alléno strives to carry modern elements into classic menus. "This is what excites me about French cuisine: using our heritage as a base but allowing for reinvention and proposing new interpretations that are modern and in tune with our times," he tells Country & Town House.

"I often say that the sauce is the verb of French cuisine because it is the sauce that allows the dish to sing to each other," Alléno tells Country & Town House. It is through these sauces Alléno aims to impart fresh flair and tastes to familiar recipes. As seen in his dishes, Alléno regards both sauces and mains with similar reverence, and it is this respect that has helped Alléno create his unique, personal style that demonstrates both curiosity and a mature approach to the culinary art form.

"I want to enrich the past, not make it over, and so you have to think — how does food follow the evolution of society?" he asks Sous-Vide Magazine. With the help of a scientist from the Culinary Research and Education Academy, Alléno has used fermentation, extraction, and reduction to create more complex flavors. By blending the creations, his sauces become more complex than what might be found in the home of the everyday cook. Alléno admits this is part of the appeal of his food, recalling the frustrations of his customers who have tried to replicate the sauces for themselves. "French food is very complex; like in wine, the complexity has to be shown at the table," he explains.