At the table with Akrame Benallal, the head of the athletes’ village for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

Feeding thousands of people during Paris 2024: that could quite naturally be the vocation of a great chef. But feeding them 24 hours a day, for a limited period of a few weeks, in an ultra-secure space closed to the public, that’s another challenge. It’s the one taken up by Akram Benallal, 42, the unique chef who has embraced both the great French gastronomy and that of the Silk Road (we’ll come back to that) and who is preparing, this summer, to pilot (alongside Amandine Chaignot and Alexandre Mazzia), the kitchens of the Olympic and Paralympic villages. To find out more, the meeting is at his restaurant on Rue Tronchet, in the Madeleine district of Paris: an arty den opening onto the courtyard of the Hôtel de Pourtalès, punctuated by contemporary works that could even inspire a dessert, where a team from all over the world works, dressed, among other things, in vegetable-print t-shirts. Black hair, smoked Tom Ford glasses, a watch that shines under the sleeve of an Issey Miyake top, the chef is also behind the counter: an exception to the rule of this Vanity Fair lunch, he has suggested meeting at his place, having to rush to Reims at 3 p.m. for a four-handed dinner in a five-star Champagne restaurant.

The menu? He chooses it. The lunch menu is €85, which is very reasonable for a restaurant of this caliber, which allows itself, it is a luxury these days, to close on weekends. On this gray spring day, the terrace is not open, but the faithful are there: “You see, those two? They must have come here about twenty times. And they have never eaten the same thing,” the chef points out, discreetly indicating two friends seated at the counter, who will not fail to greet him as they leave. Akrame’s philosophy? “You have to seize your chance. And rest assured: I see it like a train that passes several times a day. You just have to not stay on the platform,” explains the man who started out as a teenager with a vocational certificate after a childhood in Algeria, at a time when cooking was nothing like the cool it is today. As for the Olympic Games, luck showed up five years ago, at the time of a first call for tenders that he would end up winning with his two acolytes, under the leadership of the Sodexo group, the world number one in collective catering. As the pink radishes… with rose, and a mushroom soup made with leftover bread served like an espresso, arrived in a floral and millimeter-perfect setting, the chef returned to the challenge of “working for twenty thousand people, from all over the world, with different cultures, religions, habits, juggling with draconian constraints, health constraints such as the absence of raw food, technical constraints such as the absence of a fryer…”

No doughnuts for athletes? They will be entitled, for the most part, to “vegetable. It is a more readable cuisine, but just as complex, that I work more and more in my restaurants”, underlines this boss, a bit of a father that we dream of as a best friend, also at work at the Mandarin Oriental in Marrakech and in Doha, Qatar. But once again, the surprise is there. Akrame Bennallal’s cuisine is, of course, a story, a journey, but never the one we expect. At a time of the Levantine surge, he could play the Mediterranean card, flatter himself that he is reinventing the influences of his mother’s cuisine and the Oranese flavors that saw him grow up and discover the profession.

Olympic muesli and Uzbek rice

However, there will be no vegetarian couscous in the Olympic Village, but, among other things, “a crispy red and white quinoa muesli, worked with mascarpone, parmesan, fresh herbs, inspired by a dish from the menu of the gastronomic establishment…” A detour as he likes them. When he opened abroad, Akrame Benallal did not bet on the flagship destinations of the early 2000s, preferring to the mirages of New York and Tokyo the nascent and completely unknown scenes of Manila and Baku. Like a Marco Polo of food, he brings back techniques, flavors, imaginary horizons today embodied in Shirvan, his address on Place de l’Alma, where Iranian or Uzbek rice, lamb with pomegranate, octopus chermoula are offered in an elegant atmosphere, a perfect counterpoint to what could have been a special Genghis Khan social media decor.

Back to Rue Tronchet. The Brittany lobster, cooked in front of the customer on binchotan (“even the charcoal comes from Japan: it’s a wood that doesn’t fall apart”), releases dancing plumes of white smoke, next to a crispy buckwheat with seafood stuffing. The melting asparagus with three flavors (the secret: cooking it, unpeeled, in the oven) signals, despite the rain and gray sky, that spring is here.

The poetic menus of Akrame Benallal, in his Parisian restaurant on rue Tronchet.

The poetic menus of Akrame Benallal, in his Parisian restaurant on rue Tronchet.

Is Akrame Benallal a great athlete? “I did a bit of boxing. I love Teddy Riner. But I mostly followed the Olympic Games on TV: I watched both gymnastics and figure skating. And I love motorsport!” he continues over an oyster prepared with liquid nitrogen and hazelnut powder, a taste slap as icy as it is salty that the athletes will not be treated to. What he likes most about them is their mentality. “I am a supporter of ‘no risk, no story’. What I like about Teddy Riner, Laure Manaudou, Mohamed Ali brandishing his medal in Rome in 1960, is the technique, but above all the mentality. It is the constant ability to surpass oneself, like marathon runners, to go further, to break the limits. In this respect, Paralympic athletes absolutely fascinate me!” ” he insists, looking forward to future encounters. Because Akrame Benallal, a starred, renowned, Michelin-starred chef, is first and foremost a gang member. That of the restaurant, where his role, he says, is not only to create – he is currently thinking about cooking in a coffee grounds crust, in a circular vision of his supplies and waste management – “but also to encourage, to unite, to give latitude. I have this idea that you have to be a good father”. In private, he loves nothing more than inviting his friends home, also spending time behind the stove, slamming down, he swears, “two or three dishes in an hour”. And he doesn’t say no to a good pot-au-feu, a leftover dish emblematic of France that he loved in the film The Passion of Dodin Bouffantthe best director award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. And has been dreaming since then of having a bite to eat with Benoît Magimel, just for the guy. But in the meantime, it’s time to head to Gare de l’Est for this exceptional dinner at the Royal Champagne co-orchestrated with Paolo Boscaro. Otherwise, to get to the Olympic village this summer, Akrame Benallal has just bought himself a bike.

Discovering the athletes’ muesli

Akrame Benallal’s quinoa muesli, designed for the athletes of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

This quinoa muesli will delight the winners, and not only them. Could it be the star dish of Paris 2024? For the residents of the Olympic village, Akrame Benallal has designed this crispy quinoa muesli combining red and white quinoa, shallots, mascarpone and parmesan. A dish that is both nutritious and balanced, inspired among other things by the plant-based dimension of the menu at his restaurant Shirvan, which will be served alongside Amandine Chaignot’s poultry with crayfish, or Alexandre Mazzia’s chickpea pommade and watermelon gazpacho.