With two Michelin stars and dubbed Gault & Millau “Chef of the Year” typifying his soaring acclaim, Parisian born Chef Thierry Marx is arguably France’s hottest avant-garde chef. Chef Marx’s dynamism has without exception taken contemporary French cuisine to a new level.

A veteran of Taillevent and Joël Robuchon’s Jamin, Chef Marx is comfortable enough with his genius to be playful on the plate. Wildly experimental — there’s a reason his recent book is called Planet Marx — his take on modern (or molecular) cuisine has a lightness of both touch and spirit that is often lacking with younger Parisian chefs.

Dexterity of his talent is also reflected in his dedication to the produce of the Gironde region and terroir of Médoc, and redefines Bordelaise gastronomy as Chef at the Hotel Château Cordeillan- Bages. At the stunning Château and home of the Ecole de Bordeaux Wine School, the sense of discovery evoked by his intellectual presentations, which invert conceptions of texture and temperature, comes through delight, not dogma. Chef Marx spends the restaurant’s annual three-month closing eating and studying Buddhism and travelling Asia from a base in Tokyo, giving his Eastern accents authority