Jean-François Beauduin

Coming Up

At La Croix Blanche, Jean-François Beauduin is Head Chef and owner, and the room reflects the same balance that defines the cooking: Loire fish on one side, game on the other, with the classics kept in form rather than flattened into nostalgia. The house is his as much as the kitchen, and Beauduin’s hand is clearest where river produce meets a dish like lièvre à la royale, handled with steadiness rather than excess.

Where They Are Now

His cooking continues to run on two lines: the freshwater produce of the Loire and the demands of classic game work. The river brings in fish with different textures and uses, while the hare remains the central measure of the kitchen’s seriousness, cooked into a form that belongs to tradition without feeling fixed in the past. Beauduin’s method stays close to provenance and older technique, but it is not mannered; at La Croix Blanche, the language is direct, and the flavors are built to hold.

In Their Words “Antoine Proust, a professional fisherman, supplies me with all my Loire fish: barbel, mullet, eel, bream and, exceptionally, pikeperch, which it would be worth worrying about because of its rarity.” The supply line here is part of the craft itself. Beauduin’s list of fish reads like a working inventory of the Loire, and the mention of Antoine Proust shows how central that relationship is to the kitchen’s identity. The point is not just sourcing, but dependency on the river’s range and on the person who brings it in. “With the sénateur Couteaux version, the hare is cooked as a stew with a very tannic red-wine sauce, lots of garlic and shallots.” This is lièvre à la royale as a method rather than a slogan. In the sénateur Couteaux version, the hare is treated as a stew, the sauce driven toward tannin, with garlic and shallots carrying weight alongside it. Beauduin’s description lands where the dish lives: in depth, force, and the discipline needed to keep an old preparation legible.