At the Hostellerie du Grünewald’s gourmet offshoot the Chef’s Table, co-owner and chef Clovis Degrave and pastry chef Pauline Michelin say it is a daily challenge to provide customers with quality and innovation in Luxembourg’s ultra-competitive high-end restaurant sector.
What is your background, and how did you come to the restaurant business?
Pauline Michelin: I am originally from Burgundy – I studied in the Jura and I was lucky enough to work in beautiful restaurants such as Le Montrachet in Puligny-Montrachet and the Villa René Lalique at Wingen-sur-Moder in Alsace. After arriving in Luxembourg in 2021, two years later I joined Clovis and Aline [Bourscheid] for the opening of the Chef’s Table, and now I also do the desserts for Maison B.
Clovis Degrave: I followed the traditional path – a few years in hotel school, a bachelor’s degree in management and marketing. I was planning to start a master’s degree in retail management in Nice, but then I was offered the position of head chef at Le Sud in the Rives de Clausen by Christophe Petra. After he sold the restaurant to Steve Darné and Jean-Claude Colbach, they promoted me to head chef, and I am still grateful for the experience they gave me. A few years later, I met Aline during a brief stint as head chef at Brasserie Schuman; we decided to open a restaurant together and took over the Hostellerie du Grünewald in 2017. We opened the Chef’s Table in 2023 and Maison B last November.
Pauline, how did you conceive your dessert for the Osaka Universal Expo competition?
Pauline Michelin: Clovis came to me one day and said there was a competition in which I had to take part, with entries due in just 15 days. The theme of the competition is Doki Doki, which means the beating of the heart in Japanese, so I decided to work on combining Luxembourg and Japanese traditions in a single dessert. I used honey from the local beekeeper who supplies us at the Hostellerie and the Chef’s Table, and Luxembourg Bamkuch, worked flat to create something coherent and soaked in sake for the Japanese touch. I added the small Japanese citrus fruit sudachi, a hybrid between mandarin and yuzu, and as a finishing touch little honeycomb tuile with honey and sake, and small bees.
“The goal is always to grow.” -Clovis Degrave
Clovis, what challenges and opportunities do you face?
Clovis Degrave: The professional goal is to continue to develop and stabilise our businesses. That is a daily challenge – even if it is a passion-driven profession, even if we love cooking, pastry-making, serving people and advising on wine, there is still a business behind it. There are overheads we must absorb, and we have to attract customers, who ultimately pay all the indirect costs. There is strong competition in Luxembourg, especially in high-end gastronomy, and a lot of restaurants, so we need talented professionals such as Pauline. Our other head chefs and sous-chefs at the Chef’s Table and Maison B manage daily operations on-site under the guidelines I provide. The goal is always to grow – we do not yet know where, but I’m sure we will keep expanding.
