Chef-Owner on the Rise: More young chefs are becoming entrepreneurs focusing on local specialties and the environment with a nice dose of design excellence. Here’s one: Chef Benjamin Mathieu renovates the restaurant La Grotte and contributes to the comeback of French cuisine. In this video, we tour the restaurant and sit down with the chef.
Despite the post-pandemic economy, chef-owners are on the rise. Now, it seems rather ubiquitous to find chef-owners at prime locations around the world, and the same goes for France. They’re operating beyond culinary trends, though, working architectural tendencies into their strategy: repurposing or renovating buildings. A prime example is the emblematic restaurant of Marseille, La Grotte, located in one of the most celebrated coves of the city’s limestone landscape, along the coast of the Mediterranean. La Grotte has been running as a restaurant since the 1900s after a local citizen of the small port of Callelongue transformed it. Previously, it served as an office building for an industrial factory in the 1800s. More recently, the reputation of the establishment had been one of growing displeasure—from the unkept interior and service gone sour.
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