Alain Ducasse is one of the world’s most decorated chefs and one of the most famous chefs as well. He was born 1956 in Orthez in south west France and he started his career when he was 16 years old. After Monte-Carlo and Paris he started a third top rated restaurant in London – Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester.

You will be lucky if you see Alain Ducasse in the kitchen, but no worries since Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester is perfectly taken care of by Executive Chef Jocelyn Herland. The team is perfectly set both in the kitchen and in the dining room, that is looked after by Restaurant Director Nicolas Defremont.

Alain Ducasse has been accused of convenient copy and paste in his flagship restaurants and that the employees just follow every command handed out by the Super Chef at the price of missing personal creativity and development. After several years of numerous dinners at Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester we can just note that the restaurant just gets better and better so no worries about any lack of quality – the restaurant is fantastic.

And of course you will notice some similarities between Alain Ducasse’s restaurants, but there is nothing wrong with that as long as the quality is 100 percent, like with the cookpot. The porcelain cookpot was designed and developed by Pierre Tachon for Pillivuyt and is used for Alain Ducasse’s signature dish that is served all over the world at his restaurants. It is a vegetable dish based on seven seasonal vegetables from the local area where it is prepared. The different versions of the cookpot dish are all delicious.

Alain Ducasse’s love for the perfect ingredients and vegetables in particular is shown all over the menu in his London restaurant. The course with crispy raw and cooked vegetable tart with fresh herb condiment is fantastic and the Anjou pigeon “à la broche” with Provencal artichokes turnips and salmis sauce is one of the best pigeon dishes served anywhere in the world. Since the start of the restaurant back in 2007 the delicious “Sauté gourmand” dish has been served with lobster, truffled chicken quenelles and home-made pasta and the dish works perfect today as well, so hopefully the restaurant will continue to make it for many more years.

Executive Chef Jocelyn Herland really delivers over and over again. Complaints have been made that the restaurant is not as trendy and innovative as others, but who cares about any trend when the flavours are so perfect thanks to carefully selected ingredients and impeccable execution.

Written by Andy