I was so excited to be able to talk to Guillaume Brahimi in the month his Melbourne restaurant, Bistro Guillaume celebrates its 10 year anniversary. I knew all about Guillaume having watched with delight, his five minute Plat du Tour episodes which aired on SBS during the Tour de France and featured famous dishes from the regions the cyclists were passing through. Guillaume’s love of cooking and his love of sharing French cuisine was palpable. Guillaume was born in Paris and knew from a young age that he wanted to be a chef. He did his apprenticeship at the iconic Aux Charpentiers restaurant, which closed in 2016, but had opened in the 1860s. By the early 1900s this was the place for young chefs to learn the trade. So can you imagine doing an apprenticeship there?! He then worked at the Tour d’Argent and then Jamin under Joel Robuchon, a celebrated French chef who is described as having rewritten the rules of fine dining. He found a very apt student in Guillaume who rose through the ranks to become sous chef before announcing that he was leaving for Australia. Robuchon famously told him that he had never heard of that establishment, but off Guillaume went for Sydney in the nineties. Nothing could hold him back and he successfully ran Bennelong in the Sydney Opera House for 14 years from 2001. With all this in mind, obviously I was excited. Our chat was very brief, because understandably, Guillaume is a busy man. He was on the way to pick up his son and would be celebrating his daughter’s 15th birthday that day as well. But it was absolutely a case of quality over quantity and Guillaume came up with some gold.