Ep 31: Christine Doublet - Le Fooding

Food Tribe

Today’s episode is a little different - we’re going to be talking about a new international food awards programme. A collaboration between Le Fooding and Mastercard, Priceless Cities Best New Bistro launched earlier this year and they’re doing things a little differently to the likes of Michelin and Worlds 50 Best.

The PCBNB awards shine a light on a new generation of chefs and restaurateurs, recognising the cool innovative new places that have opened in the last 12 to 18 months, that don’t require you to book a year in advance or mortgage your house to dine there.

By recognising these recently opened independent places, this awards programme is current, accessible to a lot more diners, and it’s up to date on where the interesting stuff is happening in food today.

For this first year they’re starting with four cities - Paris, London, New York and Mexico City. The shortlist for London (out of around 25 places selected) includes Bright, Mao Chow and Tayer + Elementary (with the brilliant TATA Eatery in charge of the food offering).

So why am I talking about this food award?

In the upcoming episodes I’ll be interviewing the three shortlisted spots for London so as a prelude I wanted to find out more about this new awards programme, why it’s different and why us diners should care.

My guest today is the lovely Christine Doublet, the head of editorial at Le Fooding in Paris, and the lady in charge of this new awards programme.

Christine has such a great knowledge of the global dining scene, so it was great to pick her brain and talk all things food. We cover what the new awards programme is all about and go into some of the shortlisted restaurants, a bit on Le Fooding and what they do, what trends are happening on the international food scene, and Christine shares a bit of her background in food, and how she came to have this dreamy job flying around the world to dine out at the coolest new spots. She also lets us in on her personal list of favourite places to eat at in 2019…

Winners are being announced across all four cities this Monday 25th November. You can see the full list for each city at bestnewbistro.com.

Recommendations from Christine - places mentioned in Paris:

Café Pimpin

Les Arlots

Billili

Places mentioned on the French Basque coast:

L’Antre (Bidart)

Maitenia (Ciboure)

Elements (Bidart)