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Thierry Marx: the chef with many hats

Known for his work at the gourmet restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental in Paris, Thierry Marx is also the founder of Cuisine Mode d’Emploi(s), a free school for professional reintegration. But the chef still has many other projects that you can discover here.

​Thierry Marx is a resourceful manager with many projects. Former star of top chef, he stands above all at the head of the two-star restaurant Tailored On Mandarin Oriental and at the school’s initiative Kitchen manual(s), which offers free training to people in professional retraining. In 2023 it also opened HONOR, a gastronomic table where 20% of the staff are in reintegration. Discover below Biography of Thierry Marx.

Biography of Thierry Marx

Born in the 20th arrondissement of Paris on September 19, 1959, Thierry Marx spent his youth in the suburbs of Champigny-sur-Marne. Gifted in sports – especially in the practice of judo – but uncomfortable on school benches, the young man tries to sign up for hotel training. Unfortunately, his academic results are not high enough to integrate the coveted establishment. “I I will always remember a meeting with a guidance counselor who, faced with my lack of motivation in college, asked me what I wanted to do. I tell him I want to go to a hotel school. She replies, “Cooking is not for you.” So I find myself at take a CAP in mechanics general. I stayed there for 3 months”. Already strong in the head, Thierry Marx insists and finishes join the Compagnons du Devoir for a year. At risk ? A cake topper!

© ROMUALD MEIGNEUX/SIPA

Back with his family and facing unemployment, the 18-year-old young man decided to join the army as a paratrooper before he was Peacekeeper during the war in Lebanon in 1980. An experience of life in community that had a great influence on him. “The army is a place of camaraderie where you meet people you can count on. We belong to a force, to a family”. However, his return to Champigny-sur-Marne is not the easiest… Thierry Marx multiplies unequal jobs but struggles to find his way: he alternates between being a security guard, a trader, a money carrier… and spends most of his free time riding motorbikes with his friends.

A few months later, fate will give him a sign. In fact, the wife of one of his clients, for whom he provided security, offers him to make a birthday cake for his son. Satisfied, she decides to push for the pastry chef’s candidacy at a private club where she works. behind the stove, Thierry Marx regains confidence and decides to go back to school. He thus joined the prestigious Lenotre school to get back on track. Neither one nor two, the machine has been (re)launched and his desire to work with the biggest in the business is obvious.

The young enthusiast is employed as a clerk in the prestigious restaurant Size event with chef Claude Deligne and then with Alain Chapel before rubbing shoulders with the cast Joel Robuchon. His boundless curiosity and cheekiness allow him to establish himself as one charismatic chef and terribly innovative. At the same time, Thierry Marx makes stops in Asia and the USA to enrich his culinary inspirations with exotic flavors…

The foolproof ambition, Thierry Marx also shares it her Accompanying Mathilde de Lecotaismet an artist photographer in 2003 as part of a collaboration on his first book of molecular recipes called Planet Marx. The audacity of the chef mixed with the photographic talent of the artist allowed this work to achieve PDesign Award and the Grand Jury Award for the International Festival of Culinary Photography in 2009. A meeting at the top for this passionate duo who seem intent on stunning the taste buds and the eyes. Enough to give wings to the chef who has published several recipe books, and even You don’t die with your mouth fullin collaboration with Odile Bouhier, an exciting thriller in the background… about cooking of course!

Where can you find Thierry Marx’s restaurants?

thierry-marx-restaurant-camelia
© George Apostolidis

In 1980, of course, he took over the head chefs at Hotel Le Cheval Blanc in Nîmes, located opposite the city’s Arena, then Château Cordeillan-Bages in Pauillac not far from Bordeaux. It is in these places that the chef develops his creative DNA which over the years becomes its trademark. His maturity is also rewarded by two stars in the Michelin guide !

In 2010, the chef felt mature enough to run the luxury kitchens Mandarin Oriental Hotel, located not far from Place Vendôme in Paris. A year later he opened the gourmet restaurant there Tailored by Thierry Marx (awarded two stars in the Michelin guide), the Camellia as well as a pastry counter. Since April, the new spring menu offers e.g divine squid in carpaccioa beautiful varnished monkfish, green asparagus, sweet lemon and pressed almond milk or a grilled Iberian plum, pea hummus, spring onions and ajvar. The dessert menu is signed by Pastry chef Adrien Bozzolo which offers a creation as aesthetic as it is delicious: “Pink Pearl“, a gluten-free pastry consisting of shortbread and coconut biscuits, grapefruit supremes, a mousse and a coconut marshmallow.
In the wake of the Mandarin Oriental, the chef opens a brasserie in the Gare du Nord, another in Lyon, and since the end of 2017 he has aimed to launch a network of more than 20 ethical and environmentally responsible bakeries.

One of his latest masterpieces? The resumption of Jules Verne restaurant, on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower with his accomplice, chef Frédéric Anton, and the launch of Marxitoa restaurant of Street food imagined in collaboration with the designer Ora Ito. In May 2022, the chef also opened Madame Brasserie on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower.

Finally, at the beginning of February 2023, Thierry Marx opens HONORTHAT first gastronomic restaurant with social impact, where 20% of the staff are people in the reintegration process.

thierry-marx-risoni-octopus
Squid risoni, in ink, squid tagliatelle, crispy vegetables © Mathilde de l’Ecotais

Where can you find Thierry Marx’s bakeries?

In addition to his restaurants, the chef has also opened three bakeries in Paris and one in Tokyo. baptized Thierry Marx bakery, they are located in the capital’s 6th, 7th and 16th arrondissements, and offer bread but also snacks and cakes. The bakery is especially known for its bread maki, rolled and garnished bread reminiscent of Japanese maki.

Thierry Marx is eager to pass on his knowledge and strengthens his commitment to young, disadvantaged generations who embark on gastronomic adventures: he opens several integration schools in France, Kitchen instruction manual(s) for train chefs for free and issue them with a certificate of professional qualifications. “IIt is important to give everyone the opportunity not to get frustrated. This is also the reason why I focus on vocational education. It is an extremely strong lever for a better society. In the schools we have set up, they say: “You don’t know how to learn to do, well you want to do to learn”it’s the same mechanics” mischievously assures this ambitious chef.

What TV series did Thierry Marx make?

Due to his various successes and his galloping fame, Thierry Marx joined the prestigious jury of Top chef from 2010 to 2014 together with the chefs Ghislaine Arabian, Jean-Francois Trap And Christian Constant. In 2016 he also joined Julie Andrieu in the show Juliet’s notebooks on France 3 to share his know-how and reinvent, in his own way, traditional French recipes, such as beef bourguignon, pot-au-feu, ratatouille… In 2022, Thierry Marx will join the jury of the amateur competition Master chef broadcast on France 2.

thierry-marx-molecular-kitchen
© POUZET/SIPA

In 2008 he founded foodlabA experimental cooking laboratory cross-border gastronomy and science. Scientists from all over the world and renowned chefs meet there once a year to imagine tomorrow’s cuisine with molecular sauce. So he likes revisiting traditional dishes draws inspiration from flavors from other places. Eager to play with textures and temperatures, the chef’s recipes are simple and complex at the same time.

What are its innovative recipes?

Veal bread spaghetti, transparent egg and Parmesan cream, foie gras with cooked peaches or conical quail… Thierry Marx’s recipes pride themselves on innovation and their titles engage a strong imagination… The chef enjoys surprising with marriages of daring flavors, both in texture and taste! To test without hesitation! THAT soy risotto with oystersaccording to Véronique André’s book “Petits secrets de Grands chefs”, published in September 2021 by Hachette Pratique, is the symbolic dish of the chef.

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