KEDGE graduate Hélène Darroze signs on for another season of Top Chef on the French channel M6.

A member of the prestigious jury of the successful cooking show Top Chef since 2015, Hélène Darroze (ESC class of 1990), a chef with multiple Michelin stars, has decided to extend her contract for the new season. You can see her on television starting on january 31st.

While her appearance on television has made her a household name, Hélène Darroze, a 1990 graduate of KEDGE Business School, is above all a highly renowned chef in the culinary world. A former commis chef in Alain Ducasse’s kitchen, Hélène has earned two stars for her London restaurant The Connaught and also runs a Michelin-starred establishment in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. That makes her one of the only working female chefs to be honoured with a Michelin star, along with Anne-Sophie Pic. In 2015, she was even named ‘best female chef in the world’.

After graduating from the Bordeaux campus of KEDGE Business School in 1990, where she studied hospitality management, she spent three years at Le Louis XV, a gourmet restaurant at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo, under the direction of famed head chef Alain Ducasse, a native of the Landes administrative department in southwestern France. Ducasse, who had just earned his prestigious third star, encouraged her to pursue haute cuisine, saying, ‘Trust me, I’ve been watching you—stay in the kitchen’.

A native of Landes as well, Hélène inherited her love of cooking from her forebears. In 1895, in Villeneuve-de-Marsan, her great-grandfather opened the inn Le Relais, which was later run by her grandparents, then her father, Francis, and her uncle, Claude. Hélène, born on 23 February 1967 in Mont-de-Marsan, is the fourth generation of this family of hoteliers, restaurateurs, and chefs, to which her cousin Alain Darroze also belongs.

From childhood, she was taken with the markets of Basque Country, where her father purchased regional products from Landes: porcini mushrooms, fresh eggs, foie gras, live poultry, Chalosse beef, Adour salmon, milk-fed lamb, and more.

In 1993, she took over the family inn and, two years later, received her first award, ‘Jeune Chef de l’Année’ (Young Chef of the Year) from the Guide Champérard, and ‘Grand de Demain’ (Luminary of Tomorrow) from Gault-Millau in 1996.

With this recognition, she was commissioned in 1995 by Relais & Châteaux to cook a meal for President Jacques Chirac on the occasion of his visit to Périgueux. The President of the French Republic congratulated her on the meal and took two extra helpings of her stuffed squab.

When Hélène’s parents decided to sell the family inn in 1999, she decided to open her own restaurant in Saint-Germain-des-Près in Paris, and less than a year later earned her first star from the Michelin Guide, and a second one in 2003.

Since, Hélène has opened restaurants in Paris (Toustem), London (The Connaught, with two Michelin stars), and Moscow (Raff House by Hélène Darroze).

Season 9 of Top Chef, entitled ‘Le Choc des Brigades’ (Battle of the Brigades), will be an occasion for chefs Hélène Darroze, Philippe Etchebest, and Michel Sarran to get even closer to the contestants and even to face off against each other. Each chef will lead a team of four contestants whom they will support throughout the contest to try to lead them to victory.

Bestof Digital PGE