Paul Guénot and Archibald De Prince, second chefs at the starred Luxembourg restaurants Ma Langue Sourit and La Distillerie, both excelled at prestigious competitions in recent weeks.

As assistant chefs, they usually work in the shadows in the kitchen. But recently, their success at prestigious competitions has put them in the spotlight: on 30 January, 24-year-old Paul Guénot, second chef at the 2-star Ma Langue Sourit restaurant in Moutfort, came third in the famous International Culinary Prize Taittinger in Paris. The young Belgian, who works in Luxembourg under the watchful eye of chef Cyril Molard, was competing alongside eight other chefs from the United States, France, Japan and Sweden, among others.

They had to prepare a dish that they had been working on for several weeks as well as a compulsory dish, unveiled the day before the final. Sweden's Louis Dupuy-Roudel from the Persona restaurant in Stockholm was declared the winner and Switzerland, represented by Kevin Vaubourg from the Beau Rivage Palace in Lausanne, came second.

Paul Guénot presented a dish rehearsed in the kitchen with Cyril Molard combining a lobster and butternut cake, a chimera of pollack and lobster served with a leek broth and butternut ravioli stuffed with a carrot condiment. According to the 'second' of the Ma Langue Sourit restaurant, this was a "really hard" dish to make, which caught the eye of the jury in Antwerp, where the young chef won his place in the final last November.

"We've improved two or three things. His dish is very beautiful, very precise and very good", said Cyril Molard before his protégé's visit to Paris. "It's good, it's arousing curiosity in Luxembourg. There aren't many young people like that any more."

Archibald De Prince prepares for the Bocuse d'Or Europe

Another young chef in the spotlight is the 32-year-old Belgian Archibald de Prince, René Mathieu's second-in-command at La Distillerie in the Château de Bourglinster, another of Luxembourg's renowned restaurants, which has also been voted twice as best vegetarian restaurant in the world. De Prince won the Bocuse d'Or final in Belgium, and, as a result, he has qualified for the next Bocuse d'Or Europe competition which is scheduled for 19 and 20 March 2024 in Trondheim, Norway.

For this, he presented a vegetable mille-feuille (a pressé of celeriac and puff pastry, tarragon pear bonbon, celeriac tuile, hazelnut butter and walnut oil sabayon with a roasted celeriac reduction), followed by a so-called 'Coucou de Malines' wrapped in a fine stuffing of lacquered lobster and crispy chicken skin salt, combined with seafood and served with risotto, for the main course. All served after five short hours of work.

Next to his preparations for the prestigious competition, De Prince is preparing to leave the Distillerie. Together with his wife Rachel, he will be taking over the Vieux Moulin in Echternach, due to open in September 2024.