Benjamin Gilles

Where It Started Before the Chigny-les-Roses dining room, there was Reims. Since 2015, Gilles has cooked as chef at Benjamin Gilles chef à domicile, a role that carries his own name and city before it carries a restaurant address. That ongoing work gives his arc a personal beginning. The chef’s signature appears first as an independent practice in Reims, then as a house built with Virginie four years later. The two roles sit side by side in his career: one attached to his name, the other to the village where he now leads a kitchen. The chronology is spare but telling. In 2019, the opening of the restaurant with his wife became the central chapter of his work, giving a family shape to the place where his cooking is most fully expressed.

Who Shaped Them At the origin of the restaurant is Virginie, the wife with whom Gilles opened it in 2019. The partnership gives the house a family line: an address formed by husband and wife, then carried day to day by a chef whose menu is designed to move. The restaurant’s own identity also forms part of that lineage. Its cooking is gastronomic, free, bold, and modern. Rather than relying on a fixed repertoire, Gilles works through rotation; every 15 days, the menu changes, making rhythm itself part of the craft. That rhythm is not ornamental. It defines how his cuisine is read: modern dishes overflowing in fresh flavours, with vegetable ingredients used as flavour and colour enhancers even when they are not the majority of the plate.

The Work Today

In the kitchen he opened in 2019, Gilles serves vegetable-forward modern cuisine. The phrase is precise: vegetables are central to the expression of freshness, colour, and flavour, but the courses are not always built with them as the largest component. His work at the restaurant is described as gastronomic cuisine, free and bold, a modern approach shaped by frequent change rather than a single permanent dish. The 15-day menu cycle keeps the cooking alert, giving each sequence of courses a short life and a clear point of view. The Michelin Guide has recognized the Chigny-les-Roses restaurant with two consecutive Michelin Plates. For a chef whose career also continues in Reims through Benjamin Gilles chef à domicile, that recognition belongs to the dining room he built with Virginie and to the contemporary cooking he signs there.