Every day, until the contest on May 31st, find here the portrait of one of the eight candidates in the running for the 54th edition of the Taittinger – International Award for cuisine d’auteur. Today meet Louis Cespedes, sous-chef at restaurant Adam/Albin (Stockholm) and Sweden’s representative.
After school, Louis deliberated between studying Medicine or joining a culinary school — two different ways of caring for the body. Eventually he decided on Ferrandi and a summer placement in a Spanish restaurant was what swung it for him. His journey has taken him via great Michelin-starred names in France, like Le Vieux Logis, La Grand’Vigne and Serge Viera. In 2017, Louis Cespedes was part of the Australian team in contention for the Bocuse d’Or and was set to move to Australia full-time when he was invited to join a 3-star kitchen in Sweden: Frantzen. That was only supposed to be for a year, but meeting a beautiful Swedish girl would change his fate. Today he is sous-chef at Adam/Albin and is preparing to open his own restaurant ‘Persona’ in 2022. Now a new father, he is hoping to bring the Taittinger trophy home to his son in Sweden. He would be the first winner from Scandinavia!
instagram.com/cespedes.louis
The 54th edition of ‘Le Taittinger’, international award for cuisine d’auteurs will take place in the kitchen of the Cordon Bleu Institute (Paris, 15th District).
The new emphasis of the award is centered on a single product which the candidates could prepare however they liked.
The subject revealed a few months earlier by the organizing committee of the International Award for cuisine d’auteur is the beef.
Each chef will thus have the opportunity to give free rein to his imagination, his culture and his inspirations to create a dish that resembles him – a real asset for the members of the jury during the tasting.
Called ‘imposed recipe’, the second part of the competition will be revealed to the candidates the evening before the Final. The young competitors will have one night to imagine a recipe.
