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In a Matter of Months, He Has Captured OC With Pinot Provence
The restaurant that captured most of our attention since last fall is the exquisitely designed Pinot Provence in the Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel. Without a signature restaurant of its own for a long time, the Westin eventually struck a joint venture with Los Angeles restaurateur and super-chef Joachim Splichal and his wife, Christine, to bring an inviting, yet haute cuisine French restaurant to the hotel. That said, it took a local chef-partner of extraordinary talent himself for Pinot Provence to capture our souls in such a short time. That chef is Florent Marneau, who made my choice for Chef of the Year easy. Not only is this county enthralled with his cooking at Pinot Provence, national acclaim has already arrived with rave reviews from far outside our boundaries.
Florent is French to the core, but so very caring of his diners. This soft-spoken, kind chef trained in France and worked in some of the most outstanding restaurants in and around Paris. He was in the kitchen for a time at the spectacular Pre Catalan, situated in a forested area north of Paris (a restaurant I've dined in with my own friends). He worked at the famous L'Aigle Noir in Fontainebleau. Eventually, he arrived in Los Angeles and cooked in top-notch restaurants in our region. For almost seven years, he was in the kitchens of Pascal and Aubergine here in Orange County. Then, he was tapped last autumn to cook his dishes, his way, at Pinot Provence.
I ate several lunches and dinners during the first months Pinot Provence was open. Eating Florent's food was like discovering a new work of art with every dish I tried. Each time, there...