Franco-Malian chef Mory Sacko: 'I want African cuisine to be recognised as gastronomy'

With his 'alchemic' creations, this young cook is shaking up Paris' culinary scene

Chef Mory Sacko. Photo: Mosuke

For anyone interested in French gastronomy, it is currently almost impossible to escape the instantly recognisable features of Mory Sacko, 29.

Not surprising, given that this captivating Franco-Malian from the gritty Parisian suburbs stands 6 feet 5 inches tall, with dreadlocks tucked into a chic kimono-style chef’s jacket, and that his restaurant, MoSuke, is currently the hottest foodie address in Paris.

What’s more, he is proposing what seems to be a genuinely new approach to gourmet cuisine by combining the tastes and ingredients of France, Japan and West Africa – something that threatens to shake up the cosy world of French fine dining.

He took the first step to becoming a media star by enchanting the French public as a candidate on television’s Top Chef in 2019. Michelin then made the near-revolutionary decision to award him his first star only two months after MoSuke opened, followed by the prestigious Gault et Millau food guide crowning him France’s Young Chef of the Year 2020.

Sacko now has his own TV programme, Cuisine Ouverte, attracting more than 1.5 million viewers, and Time magazine has identified him as one of their Next Generation Leaders. But while media hype and social media buzz may instantly acclaim the next brave new face of Gallic cuisine, I am much more interested to know what his actual cooking is all about.

MoSuke is discretely tucked away in a narrow street behind the sprawling Montparnasse train station. The restaurant is a quaint two-storey house with a plant- filled courtyard. There’s a minimalist dining room and kitchen on the ground floor, while the chef and his business partner, Emilie Rouquette, live right upstairs.

I arrive as the lunchtime service is winding down; a decidedly young, hip crowd of diners, enchanted by the chef and his cuisine, are reluctant to leave at even 4pm. When a restaurant is permanently booked out, an afternoon interview normally allows the journalist time to sample a single dish to get an idea of the cuisine. Not at MoSuke.

Sacko arrives for the interview in black T-shirt and jeans, dons a blue apron, and with a mischievous grin, heads straight for his tiny kitchen. The rest of the staff have gone home, and for the next two hours, he single-handedly conjures up a series of spectacular dishes. He squats down to chat during each course, insisting: “I just don’t think I can talk about my cuisine without you tasting it. It is a simple as that.”

It’s a refreshingly humble attitude from such a stellar rising star. The recipes he is creating are quite simply a tour de force, each dish an explosion of flavours, spices and ingredients that you will not find in any other French fine-dining restaurant.

A peppery Ivorian fish soup, using delicate Japanese katsuobushi dried fish instead of the more pungent African variety, paired with a smoky Normandy scallop and stuffed okra. Plump Brittany lobster, flame-grilled, melded with nori harissa and squid ink sauce, adding a unique umami effect. Succulent beef from Aubrac, aged in karité butter, surrounded by a smooth, nutty Senegalese mafé sauce, where miso magically lightens the traditional palm oil.

When cooking a chicken yassa, rather than using just the traditional lemon, he adds Japanese citrus fruits – yuzu, kabosu, sudachi – which bring complexity and intense aromas. And for dessert, he gives his chef patissier exotic pairing challenges, and I feast off three different combinations of chocolate and wasabi.

When discussing his cuisine, he studiously avoids the dreaded F word – fusion – and for me, the term that best expresses his cooking is alchemy. “I am creating what you can call a new cuisine, merging African spices and flavours with locally sourced French produce and then adding in subtle influences from Japanese cooking that can subtly soften the aggression you find in African street food,” he explains.

“I definitely have an ambition for African cuisine and that is for it to be recognised as gastronomy with a capital ‘G’. It merits being alongside French, Italian and Japanese cuisine, and not just dismissed as tasty street food that does not have a place in a gourmet restaurant,” Sacko says.

“That means putting in a lot of work, experimentation and reflection about how to adapt the incredible tastes of Africa for a sophisticated Western palate. I cannot just serve a chicken yassa or beef mafé as we eat it in West Africa, as it is too spicy, too heavy,” he explains.

“And I also need to work out how best to use our unique products like attiéké fermented cassava, sweet potato, ancient cereals like fonio, and fabulous fruits and flowers from baobab and mango to hibiscus. Of course, when my mum comes to the restaurant, she will say that I am not cooking our traditional dishes properly, as she expects them to taste like her home cooking rather than the more refined interpretation I am trying to achieve.”

It is not surprising that the clientele at MoSuke is decidedly young, ready and excited to try new tastes and be surprised. It may take some time for him to convert France’s older, more conservative generation, who have become used to the bland cuisine served up by most Chinese, Vietnamese and Indian restaurants, a far cry from the authentic ethnic tastes on offer in London or New York.

“I grew up in a big family of nine children where every night, my mother, who was born in Ivory Coast and brought up in Senegal, cooked delicious West African dishes,” the chef recalls.

“But the kitchen was out of bounds, her territory, and the thought of becoming a chef never entered my head. All I was interested in was Japanese Manga cartoons, French rap music and following my beloved PSG football team.”

But watching TV programmes on gourmet restaurants and luxury hotels gave Sacko the incentive to opt out of France’s classic education system at 14 and enrol in hotel school, where he caught the

gourmet bug and learnt classic French cooking techniques. Working his way up through the kitchens of Parisian palace hotels such as the Shangri-La and Royal Monceau, he applied to join the Mandarin Oriental’s kitchen brigade under chef Thierry Marx, another Parisian banlieue boy renowned for his passion for Japanese cuisine.

Marx has clearly been a mentor for Sacko, promoting him rapidly to sous-chef and encouraging the dream of owning his own restaurant. When MoSuke opened in 2019, Sacko was only 27, but brimming with creative energy, self confidence and ambition, choosing a name that forges his own with that of Yasuke, a 16th-century emancipated African slave who became the first and only black Samurai in Japan.

Sacko admits that “being awarded the Michelin star just after we opened was what I had always dreamed of and worked for, but I had no idea it would come so quickly, and now, when they say I am the new face of French cuisine, well I am flattered, but honestly, I think I am just a classic story of modern French youth today. This is all a reflection of how the cultural face of France is changing.”

When discussing how MoSuke was closed down during Covid lockdowns and curfews only two months after opening, Sacko is one of the rare French chefs who does not immediately start complaining. With his irrepressible optimism, he recounts how, “when only takeaway was possible, I actually found it inspiring, a challenge to make what I call fast good food, even with basic dishes like fried chicken. I then did two pop-ups offering Afro-Japanese street food, one in the Museum of Modern Art here in Paris, the other in Lyon. And today, I am close to opening a street food cantina just around the corner from MoSuke.

“Then, during lockdown, when I was working on new recipes and experimenting with fermentations, infusion and smoking, I got a call from France Telévisions offering me my own TV programme. It has been an amazing experience because they actually listened to what I wanted to do and agreed to everything,” Sacko says.

Considering the current political situation in France, where the coming presidential election is engulfing the nation in racist, religious and anti-immigration rhetoric, it really is quite something to see the son of African immigrants travelling around “la France profonde”, presenting his own exotic gastronomic take on classic regional French dishes such as bouillabaisse and boeuf bourguignon, cooking alongside famous French chefs.

The biggest surprise about Mory Sacko comes just as I am leaving, when we are talking about travel. I discover that although he has visited Mali from a young age on family holidays, along with the rest of West Africa and some European countries, he has yet to actually travel to the Land of the Rising Sun, while the discovery of Asian and other world cuisines also awaits him.

Who knows what direction his cuisine will take after he tries authentic Malaysian and Thai dishes, Indian curries, Lebanese mezze and the subtle tastes of Cantonese and Szechuan cooking.