Jérôme Banctel takes over the kitchen at La Réserve Paris in 2015

In 2015, Jérôme Banctel became executive chef at La Réserve Paris, a luxury hotel near the Champs-Élysées. He took over the kitchen of its restaurant, Gabriel, which is named after the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel.

Banctel is from Brittany, in north-western France, and came to the role after a career in the kitchens of French fine-dining establishments. At Gabriel he was given the task of defining the restaurant's culinary identity, with a refined, produce-led style of cooking that drew on his Breton roots and the quality of seafood and vegetables.

The appointment mattered because it placed a relatively little-known chef at the head of one of the capital's most ambitious hotel restaurants. Over the following years, Gabriel built a reputation among French restaurant guides and critics, and Banctel became one of the figures associated with a new generation of Paris hotel chefs. That trajectory is the background to his later recognition by the Gault&Millau guide as chef of the year.