Three Chefs, One Menu: The Story Behind the FCCS Gala Dinner

Some evenings are simply dinners. Others are something else entirely, a moment where a room full of people sit down at the same table and, without quite realising it, share something that will stay with them long after the last glass is poured. The FCCS Annual Gala Dinner has always aimed for the latter. This year, it gets there with the help of three of France’s most compelling culinary voices : Loïc Portalier, Matthias Marc and Pierre Chomet.

Three chefs. Three distinct trajectories. Three ways of understanding what French cuisine can be in 2026, and where it still has left to go. What follows is the story of the people behind the plates to come.

There is a particular kind of chef who makes fine dining feel like a warm invitation rather than a test. Loïc Portalier is one of them. As Executive Chef of the one Michelin-starred Louise and La Terrace by Louise, set within the historic PMQ heritage building in the heart of Hong Kong’s SoHo, he has built a reputation for what he calls “tradition with a modern twist”, French cuisine in its most sociable, stripped-down and deeply flavourful form.

His path to Asia was built on an impeccable French foundation. He trained at some of the country’s most demanding kitchens: Epicure at Le Bristol Paris, Restaurant Paul Bocuse, and Le Clos des Cîmes, before crossing paths with Julien Royer, whose three Michelin-starred Odette in Singapore regularly tops Asia’s 50 Best. Portalier joined Royer as sous chef at Louise in Hong Kong, then helmed Claudine in Singapore as head chef, before taking full command of Louise in 2024.

What makes Portalier compelling isn’t just the technical precision, it’s the way he wears his influences lightly. Several years in Asia have given him an instinctive feel for local products, textures and seasonality, absorbed so naturally that they’ve become part of his own culinary grammar. At Louise, the result is a cuisine that feels simultaneously rooted in France and completely at ease in Asia, “inspired by products, art, cultures and techniques,” as he puts it. At this year’s Gala, that same sensibility is brought to the table, quite literally, for 700 guests.

To understand Matthias Marc, you have to start not in a kitchen, but in a forest. Born and raised in the Jura, the mountainous region of eastern France where the landscape is defined by dense pine forests, limestone cliffs and the quiet authority of the seasons, Marc grew up with an almost physical relationship to the land. It shows in everything he cooks.

His professional journey took him through some of Paris’s grandest addresses, the Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, then Lasserre and Le Meurice, before he made a decisive turn towards something more personal. In 2018, at just 31 years old, he opened Substance in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, a 25-cover restaurant that earned a Michelin star in 2022 and quickly became one of the most talked-about tables in the French capital. Gault&Millau named him Young Talent of the Year, and the Michelin Guide described his cooking as “unorthodox, vibrant, with a creative streak and a weakness for vegetables.”

His book, In Situ, is perhaps the clearest window into his world, organised around five natural elements (the forest, the meadow, the mountain, the river, the city), it reads less like a recipe collection and more like a philosophical statement about what cuisine can be when it listens to its surroundings. After nearly eight years at Substance, Marc stepped back at the end of 2025 to pursue his most personal project yet : La Maison des Cimes, opening in summer 2026 in the Doubs, deep in his native Jura.

Pierre Chomet is the kind of chef who doesn’t stay still for long, and whose cuisine bears every mark of it. Breton by heart, trained in some of France’s most exacting kitchens, he spent years moving between continents before finding the language that was truly his own.

His path took him through Le Bristol Paris, then Asia, first Bangkok, where he spent several formative years cooking at the highest level, including at the two Michelin-starred Chef’s Table at the Lebua Hotel. It was there that he developed a deep, instinctive relationship with Southeast Asian flavours, the acidity, the heat, the layering of condiments, that would come to define his cooking long after he left. He returned to France to compete in Top Chef season 12, where his bold, uncompromising style won him wide recognition.

In December 2022, he opened Ambos near the Luxembourg Garden in Paris, alongside his wife and fellow chef Cristina, a Venezuelan-born, Barcelona-raised chef whose Latin sensibility adds another dimension to the kitchen. The result is a cuisine built on impeccable French technique but entirely free from convention : French savoir-faire meets Southeast Asian spice meets Latin American warmth, served with what Pierre himself describes as “relief, acidity, and something punchy.” Their second address, Tina, extends that same spirit into a vibrant tapas bar inspired by Cristina’s Barcelona roots.