Marc Veyrat

Marc Veyrat (born 8 May 1950) is a French chef from the Haute-Savoie region, who specialises in molecular gastronomy and the use of mountain plants and herbs.

Veyrat has obtained a total of nine Michelin Stars and is the first cook to get the perfect grade of 20/20 in the Gault et Millau guide for each of his two first restaurants.

He was the owner of the restaurants La Maison de Marc Veyrat (or l'Auberge de l'Eridan) in Veyrier-du-Lac and la Ferme de mon Père in Megève. He currently operates the restaurant La Maison des Bois in Manigod. All three restaurants obtained three stars. In 2019, Veyrat was awarded two Michelin Stars for La Maison des Bois, and sued Michelin saying that the loss of one star was a miscommunication.

On 24 February 2009, he announced that he would cease all of his activities at la Maison de Marc Veyrat due to his declining health. The hotel is currently being run by his children.

He started a chain of organic "fast-food" restaurants all over France called la Cozna Vera. The first one opened in Annecy in 2008 and was later closed in 2010. He has plans to build other restaurants in Épagny, Brussels, and Paris.

His work was featured on the Discovery Channel's Discovery Atlas: France Revealed.

In December 2015, Veyrat was fined €100,000 by a French court after illegally cutting down 7,000 sq metres of protected forest near one of his restaurants.

Cuisine Marc Veyrat is known for his creativity and use of natural and organic ingredients. He specialises in molecular gastronomy. Rather than using butter, flour, eggs, oil, or cream, he instead uses roots, mountain plants, mountain herbs, and wild flowers harvested in the French Alps.

Controversy

In 2015, Veyrat was fined €100,000 by a French court for illegally destroying 7,000 sq metres of protected forest in the Alps and for ordering a large area of protected wetlands to be dried up. On top of the fine, the court ordered him to restore the wetlands. In September 2019, he filed a suit against Michelin demanding a full explanation for the lost star, including the notes made by inspectors at the time of their visit and the explicit reasons for the removal of the star. He described the suggestion that he had used an English cheese in one of his dishes as "profoundly offensive" and "worse than the loss of my parents". However, the judges held that "the independence of the evaluation constitutes the liberty of expression of the guide's inspectors," and ordered him to pay the court costs.

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