The Fête de la Gastronomie to be celebrated on 22 September at Le Cordon Bleu Paris institute

July 2017, Paris - During the 2017 Fête de la Gastronomie, Le Cordon Bleu, the leading Global Network of Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institutes, will present a round table to illustrate the theme “Products from the city centre”. The event will take place on Friday 22 September 2017 from 3pm to 5pm.

Le Cordon Bleu Paris will welcome four leading experts: beekeeper Charlotte Dumas, who looks after the bees in our hives, Pierre Georgel, who developed our 800 m2 pedagogical vegetable garden, located on the Institute’s roof, and Eric Briffard, executive Chef and Culinary Arts Director at Le Cordon Bleu Paris institute. Eric Briffard, who is committed to working with flavoursome ingredients and genuine terroirs, will share his experience of how a product is transformed for the needs of gastronomy.

Christophe Lavelle, biophysicist and researcher at the CNRS, who is passionate about food and the relationships between art and science, will host the discussions. 

Chef Eric Briffard will also provide a tasting of recipes, invented using ingredients from our vegetable garden.

This event will kick off a series of monthly conferences related to food as part of the Hautes Études du Goût, a multidisciplinary training programme focusing on the cultural, scientific, sociological and historical aspects which make up the world of taste and gastronomy.

The theme of this year’s Fête de la Gastronomie is “At the heart of the product”, a theme which showcases sectors, professions and expertise, as well as top quality “Made in France” products. For further details about the programme, please visit the official website.

The aim of this event is to establish a link between those who create a product and those who showcase it, whilst also examining the development of urban agriculture.

Registration for this round table:

• Free entry. On-line registration compulsory (seats limited) on the website.
• Please note that this event is in French only.
• Date: Friday septembre 22, 2017
• Time: 3.00pm to 5.00pm
• Place: Le Cordon Bleu Paris, 13-15 Quai André Citroën, 75015 Paris
• More information: eregnier(@)cordonbleu.edu

Le Cordon Bleu presents the participants at the round table on 22 September 2017:

“Products from the city centre”

Charlotte Dumas became a professional beekeeper after seizing a series of opportunities with which she was presented: carrying out training in beekeeping in the Jardin du Luxembourg, working with Audric de Campeau, and launching her own business. The call of the land and the need to make sure her daily life involved a truly authentic activity determined the rest. Her early career, spent in human resources, enabled her to gain an insight into the notions of work organization on which the life of a bee hive is founded.

Pierre Georgel is a landscape architect. A graduate of the Versailles Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage (ENSP), he is the founder and president of ECOVEGETAL, a benchmark in France in the field of car park and roof gardens.

Eric Briffard is executive Chef and Culinary Arts Director at Le Cordon Bleu Paris institute. With more than 35 years experience in the world of gastronomy, he has received numerous awards including the title One of the Best Craftsmen in France (Meilleur Ouvrier de France - MOF) 1994. Whilst in charge of the kitchens at the Plaza Athénée hotel and Le Régence restaurant, he was awarded 2 Michelin stars in 2000, which he won a second time in 2007 at the Vernet hotel’s Les Elysées restaurant, in Paris. In 2008, Éric Briffard took over the running of the kitchens of the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris where he was again awarded 2 stars by the Michelin guide at Le Cinq.

Christophe Lavelle is a researcher at the CNRS, linked to the Natural History Museum in Paris, an associate of the ISCC Food, Risk and Health Division, and a member of the FOOD 2.0 LAB. He is interested in the many facets of food (physical, chemical, biological, anthropological, technical and artistic). He teaches in numerous higher education establishments (Universities including Paris VI, Paris VII, Cergy-Pontoise, Aix-Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, SupBioTech Paris), gives conferences to the general public and to food industry professionals, in France and abroad, and regularly teaches at the Institute as part of Le Cordon Bleu - Hautes Études du Goût programme. Author of around fifty research papers, he is also co-author of several works, including Science culinaire (Belin, 2014) and Toute la chimie qu'il faut savoir pour devenir un chef (Flammarion 2017).