Former three-star chef Olivier Roellinger has a compelling theory. He claims that uprooted cooks are among the best, because they do everything they can to recapture the flavors of their childhood. That idea was hard to ignore when Marcel Ravin took us on a tour of his adopted land, in the shade of the Monte-Carlo Bay, the luxury hotel whose ochre towers rise above the Larvotto peninsula in Monaco. The resort covers 4 hectares of land reclaimed from the sea, with its grand décor of colonnades and arcades, luxury facilities including a fake lagoon with a real sand bottom and its gourmet restaurant, the Blue Bay, to edge a little closer to the blue of the Mediterranean.
Ravin grew up more than 7,000 kilometers away, surrounded by different shades of blue. The 54-year-old chef continues to draw inspiration from the flavors and fragrances of his native island, Martinique, which he recounted with a touch of nostalgia in his 2012 book: D’un rocher à l’autre. Itinéraire d’un chef (“From One Rock to Another: Journey of a Chef”). His world then was far removed from that of grand hotels. His roots are in the packed earth floor of a house in the commune of Le Diamant.
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