For those of us who enjoyed Cachot’s seriously under-priced menus at Detour, a couple of 95€ tabs at Perchoir might be rationalized as just desserts.
Seems Cachot has opened Monobar, a (most Spanish, it seems) tapas place at Food Society Paris food hall in the 14e.
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Facing him, there is the stand of Mory Sacko (MoSuke). Matthias Marc (Substance) is also present in Food Society. FYI, Cachot and Sacko were contestants of French Top Chef season 11 (2020) and Marc Top Chef 12 (2021).
Cachot said in an interview in 2022, despite his popularity after Top Chef, he has problem financing his new restaurant, refusal of bank loans, unsuccessful acquisition of restaurant after contract signature etc. He is still in search of possibility of opening his own restaurant in Paris and works on some small projects with brands and temp cook jobs in pop up restaurants.
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Thanks for this info Andy. I visited Détour three times in 2019, the year he closed; and many times the years before. One would assume after his success with Détour and Top Chef (coming in 2nd), Cachot would have an easier time of finding a new spot to settle. There must be something else to explain his peripatetic nature the last few years. Many chefs and restaurant owners were completely derailed by Covid, and many still are. For sure I’ll check out Monobar in the fall, but fingers crossed that Cachot lands his own place soon.
I’m amazed that Cachot has not found investors. So many other Top Chef contestants have been pistonned (is that a word in English ?) into their own restaurants that I suspect a sub-plot with Cachot.
While you are figuring out the why, you can quite happily make a tour of the dozens of other very good restos cheffed by Top Chef winners and candidates. My latest chef crush: Clément Vergeat (top Chef '18) and his fab restaurant Tamara on rue Richelieu.
Do you mean “launched?”
Maybe. But I have the French verb “pistonner” stuck in my mind. Means to advance with the help from personal connections, path greased, etc. Is there a one-word equivalent in English ?
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Maybe, but not one word, “to pull strings for”.
Benefactor?
@sfcarole @sfcarole @bcc Ok, thanks for the suggestion but not really what I mean. So I’ll replace “pistonned” with “Top Chef gave them the exposure, connections, and a leg up to easily attract investors”. 
Or we could just continue to use “pistonned” among ourselves. 
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Sometimes you can say “greased.” But it’s not a one-to-one equivalent.
I just looked up Tamara; prices look fairly high. Q: is this an expense-account place, or personal spend? (Trying to decide how heavily to weight this “crush” 
)
I, too, was struck by the prices, Andy. What I can say is that inflation, and especially food inflation, is running considerably higher here in France than the US. When I was here this past January, many places were lower in price than they are now.
A friend from NYC who was here in October and just visited again at the end of March said that last October she thought Paris restaurants were really cheap compared to NYC, but this past March she didn’t find that to be the case.
That being said, restaurants are dealing with inflation in different ways: some are raising prices, some are cutting back on ingredients (using less expensive ones, sometimes lower quality, sometimes not), cutting back portion size, trying to get by with less personnel, and various combinations of the the foregoing. And magically, some restaurants seem to be exactly the same as they were a year ago. But the end result is that a lot of people are going to have sticker shock when they visit Paris this year.
Getting back to Tamara, the wine prices (where I have a good idea of what the wines cost the restaurant) have fairly high markups and the list offers only a single bottling below 50€, which I find unusual.
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It was an expense account meal for me… or rather a colleague’s expense account, not my own. So, no sticker shock. And yes, a special occasion place and the price way above my self-imposed ceiling for a meal with friends.
@onzieme. We did wine by the glass to match each course, relying on advice from the waiter. Although not a big choice of wines by the glass, excellent pairings and relatively well-priced. Sorry, I’m not a wine guy and, as usual, did not take note of each wine. The pairing with the food is always much more important for me than the wine itself.
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Adrien Cachot just announced last night on Instagram that he has finally opened his own restaurant, Vaisseau at 35 rue Faidherbe in the 11th. I checked reservations and it appears to be booked already thoughout the month of December!
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And apparently reservations for January will not open until December 31. Will try and report back if successful! Thanks for posting.
It’s not clear to me that it’s completely booked for December. It’s possible that the reservation system is not yet up and running.
Just got confirmation for waitlist lunch on 12/12 so guess it’s working but quite booked up!
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Launched is an apt translation. “So many Top Chef contestants have been launched into their own restaurants.”
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