SIMONE ZANONI: THE FARM IN A MICHELIN-STAR DISH

Originally from Salò (BS) and forever tied to his roots, our ambassador Chef Simone Zanoni is a fountain of ideas, initiatives and creativity. His passion for cooking was inspired in his earliest childhood, during time spent with his grandmother on the farm, where he learnt the importance of authentic and wholesome ingredients.

As soon as he finished his studies, he departed for the United Kingdom to perfect his cuisine. From 1997 to 2001 he was a chef at the Aubergine restaurant in London, and through his talent managed to carve out an indispensable role in the team..

The chef divides himself between two different businesses: the Le George at the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris, where he gained his first Michelin star in 2017, and his great venture with a family flavor, Casa Zanoni, the online space he created during the pandemic aimed at bringing the restaurant experience to everyone around the globe during a moment of complete shutdown.

For Chef Zanoni, cuisine is a voyage into flavors, discoveries and pleasures that requires a fundamental ingredient: passion. To this he adds his main objective, the proposal of healthy and shareable dishes, based on principles of sustainability and ethics, achieved by implementing sustainable practices and initiatives as a fundamental value in the kitchen. 

It is no coincidence that Le George was the first hotel restaurant in Paris to eliminate bottled water, replacing it with filtered water, and one of the first to start recycling food waste in collaboration with Les Alchimistes – CirculAgronomie, a Paris company that handles the recovery of organic waste. Even the coffee waste is recycled, through a partnership with the French company La Boîte à Champignons that uses it for the cultivation of field mushrooms, which are used as an ingredient in one of the dishes served at Le George.

At the end of the meal at Le George, one can enjoy the Kafa Forest coffee in beans, with aromatic notes of dates, cherry, and honey. Derived from the first coffee plants, and with an intense and lingering flavor, Kafa Forest is currently ranked among the world’s finest coffees, and grows in the eponymous Ethiopian forest. It is harvested by hand and left to dry naturally.