Knives out in battle to be Eiffel Tower’s top chef
ALAIN DUCASSE, one of France’s bestknown chefs, is to start legal action against two rival cooks for “conflict of interest” after losing a battle to keep control of his famed Eiffel Tower restaurant.
Mr Ducasse, the first chef to win a Michelin three-star rating for three separate restaurants in the same year, has been overseeing the Jules Verne restaurant on the second floor of the tower since 2007.
Alain Soulard, one of his protégés, runs the slightly less acclaimed 58 Tour Eiffel restaurant on the first floor.
When Donald Trump made a state visit to Paris last year, he and the First Lady dined with Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte at the Jules Verne. Mr Ducasse served them sole with hollandaise sauce, Rossini beef fillet and chocolate soufflé.
However, with the contract up for renewal on Oct 1, the board operating the tower has given the deal to Frédéric Anton, whose Le Pré Catelan is among the most fashionable restaurants in Paris, and Thierry Marx, arguably France’s most media-friendly cook.
Jules Verne and the 58 are leased by Sodexo, the catering group that signed up Mr Ducasse as its frontman more than a decade ago. But before the lease was up for renewal, Mr Ducasse jumped ship and moved to Sodexo’s biggest rival, Elior.
Sodexo now backs Mr Ducasse’s two rival chefs.
When the Ducasse team received the call on July 5 from the head of the board that operates and organises events at the Eiffel Tower, announcing that he had lost the tender, the chef ’s initial reaction was one of “total incomprehension, given all that he has done for the Eiffel Tower over the past 10 years”, Frédéric Thiriez, the chef’s lawyer, told The Daily Telegraph.
The Ducasse camp accuses the consultancy tasked with choosing the winning candidate, Nova Consulting, of writing up a “totally biased” report “systematically” in favour of Sodexo.
The Ducasse bid, they say, offered higher profitability and was the only one guaranteeing a payback of €120million (£106million) during the 10-year lease. Mr Thiriez said the chef intended to launch a legal challenge with an administrative judge for “conflict of interest”.
He said that Nova Consulting had recently been employed as strategic adviser to Sodexo Prestige, the unit in charge of running the Eiffel Tower eateries, as well as other Sodexo initiatives.
That relationship cast “doubt on the impartiality of the procedure”, he said.
“We want the judge to annul the decision and start the process from scratch with a different consultancy.”
Ludovic Badin, lawyer for the Eiffel Tower operator, declined to comment on the tender process for reasons of “confidentiality”, but told Le Parisien that while Sodexo had employed Nova Consulting, so previously had Elior.
Nova Consulting has declined to comment.