Michelin Stars, French icons & cooking with lavender in Provence xx
A few years back I visited Provence with my partner Paul and did a little road trip all around the area close to Avignon.
One particular day was spent cooking at Jean-Marc Villard’s cooking school. An experience I highly recommend for FrancoFiler’s finding themselves in that corner of France! We started the day being welcomed by Jean-Marc and his lovely wife Alice before heading to the local farmer’s market. An absolute feast of colour, scent and sound to fill the senses! We then returned to Jean-Marc’s home and purpose built kitchen surrounded by olive trees and grape vines to cook and consume our goodies through the day. We prepared each course and then sat under a grape vine covered pergola to eat the exquisite creations which we had cooked under Jean-Marc’s watchful but gently encouraging eye,
Jean-Marc has decades of experience as a head chef in some of the best and Michelin star restaurants across France, as well as a long stint in the US where he brought the French cuisine to America in the early 1980s.
Prior to opening his cooking school for non-professional chefs in 2001 (first in Lyon and more recently in his home in Maubec, Provence) Jean-Marc instructed chefs at the prestigious Paul Bocuse cooking school.
For “foodie” FrancoFilers, when travelling to Provence this is an experience not to be missed!
Links for Jean-Marc’s cooking school:
Independent review of Jean-Marc’s cooking school
Musique:
Au Café du Canal