When former French president François Hollande strode through the doors of red-hot Parisian restaurant Mosuke last fall and greeted chef Mory Sacko as though they were old friends, Sacko was . . .stunned.
Sure, the dining room had been packed every night since Sacko had become the first Black chef in Paris to earn a Michelin star—just four months after Mosuke’s September 2020 debut. Even so, when the restaurant had received a call requesting a table for two under Hollande’s name only an hour earlier, he waved it off as a prank as his team hustled to make room just in case.
“The fact that he came in and called me by my first name was crazy,” Sacko says. “He was very curious about the culture of African gastronomy and asked me a lot of questions about the dishes and where I got my inspiration. I found that really beautiful.”
Allaying any suggestion that Hollande’s visit was a fluke, an invitation to cook for President Emmanuel Macron as part of a France-Africa summit arrived soon after. For the Franco-Malian chef, the twin presidential gestures were just two of several professional highs that have cemented his persona as an unofficial ambassador of haute African cuisine. They were also irrefutable proof that the continent’s culinary heritage is finally claiming its rightful seat at the notoriously persnickety French table.
At 29, Sacko is arguably the most popular and recognizable Black chef among the general French public today, thanks in no small part to his appearance as a contestant in the 2020 season of in France, where the TV series is taken seriously, and his current stint as host of the traveling Along with serving up a complex Afro-French and Japanese-inspired cuisine, Mosuke challenges French palates—and perhaps a few prejudices—into accepting the foods and flavors of Mali, Senegal and Cameroon, among other countries, as significant and legitimate gastronomic experiences.
