Skift Take
Alain Ducasse is a living legend with 20 Michelin stars and 30 restaurants bearing his name. Though he is famous for running France’s gilded dining rooms in its most expensive venues, the chef has recently expanded his business at a breakneck pace by focusing on multicultural cuisine and more affordable restaurant concepts.
Chef Alain Ducasse is a businessman who does not like to talk about money. In French culture, especially in the upper echelons of Parisian society, it is considered "le mal goût" (poor taste), to speak of or flaunt one’s money. Yet, he is a multimillionaire securing lucrative licensing deals at hotels around the world and setting culinary standards since 2005, when he became the first chef to have three restaurants awarded with three Michelin stars at the same time.
Critics have lambasted him for creating restaurants only for the superrich (waitstaff at the 2016 opening of Ore at Versailles wore powdered Renaissance wigs). But his recent, more accessible venues run counter to that narrative — which Ducasse himself rejects in his book "Manger Est un Acte Citoyen," or, to eat is a citizen’s act. In it, he writes, "To eat well is not a question of purchasing power. It’s above all a question of awareness, learning, and behavior. Everyone can learn to choose products of quality, which exist in each price category — to identify the nutrients our bodies need, take the time to eat, and ritualize each meal."
The fact is, Alain Ducasse is cooking up far more than just fancy French gastronomy. Within the past two years, his eponymous company Ducasse Paris opened a casual globetrotter’s Moroccan-Indian-Asian bistro Spoon 2, launched lunch and dinner cruises on an electric boat called Ducasse sur Seine, opened a café for coffee purists called Coffee Manufacture in Bastille, and most recently unveiled the mid-tier Mediterranean eatery called Ômer (oh, the sea!) in Monaco.
The latter is the most obvious example of demand for lower prices, even in the luxury space. In March, the French real estate-hospitality giant Société des Bains de Mer (SBM) unveiled its new $880 million mixed-use residential development and redesign of the Hôtel de Paris, which features Ômer in its high-stakes bid to recast Monaco, a known tax haven for billionaires, as Europe’s "most exclusive" t
