Last week Restaurant magazine and San Pellegrino announced their picks for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Danish restaurant Noma took the overall title, but there were still more awards to hand out where that came from. Among them was a brand new award category – World’s Best Female Chef. This award, sponsored by Veuve Clicquot champagne, was given to French chef Anne-Sophie Pic of La Maison Pic.
Though the restaurant bears her name, it was not named for Anne-Sophie Pic herself. The history of La Maison Pic Hotel and Restaurant actually starts 120 years ago with Sophie Pic, Anne-Sophie’s great-grandmother. The business has been passed down through the generations before resting today with Anne-Sophie Pic, who has since taken up the mantle with passion and risen to become among the most respected chefs in France and the world. In addition to this award, Pic also has the distinct honor of being the only woman in France to have earned three Michelin stars.
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La Maison Pic describes its own cuisine as expressing a feminine taste. “If her cooking had to be summed up in just three words,” reads La Maison Pic’s website, “it would be respect, taste and simplicity: a particularly feminine simplicity that laughs off the quest for perfection and asserts itself with direct flavors.” Those direct flavors include bourbon vanilla infused brie, violet sea urchins with egg yolk in a sorrel jelly, pan-roasted chicken with lemon marmalade, and a delicate fresh-caught bass with Aquitaine caviar which Pic notes is served, “as my father liked it.”
Anne-Sophie Pic certainly has the credentials to back up the win, but it couldn’t have been an easy choice. Pic was selected from a prestigious shortlist of candidates, which also included Nadia Santini of Italy’s Dal Pescatore and Elena Arzak from Arzak in northern Spain.
Though the restaurant bears her name, it was not named for Anne-Sophie Pic herself. The history of La Maison Pic Hotel and Restaurant actually starts 120 years ago with Sophie Pic, Anne-Sophie’s great-grandmother. The business has been passed down through the generations before resting today with Anne-Sophie Pic, who has since taken up the mantle with passion and risen to become among the most respected chefs in France and the world. In addition to this award, Pic also has the distinct honor of being the only woman in France to have earned three Michelin stars.
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La Maison Pic describes its own cuisine as expressing a feminine taste. “If her cooking had to be summed up in just three words,” reads La Maison Pic’s website, “it would be respect, taste and simplicity: a particularly feminine simplicity that laughs off the quest for perfection and asserts itself with direct flavors.” Those direct flavors include bourbon vanilla infused brie, violet sea urchins with egg yolk in a sorrel jelly, pan-roasted chicken with lemon marmalade, and a delicate fresh-caught bass with Aquitaine caviar which Pic notes is served, “as my father liked it.”
Anne-Sophie Pic certainly has the credentials to back up the win, but it couldn’t have been an easy choice. Pic was selected from a prestigious shortlist of candidates, which also included Nadia Santini of Italy’s Dal Pescatore and Elena Arzak from Arzak in northern Spain.
