NOSTALGIA ISN’T FOR EVERYONE
AT TWENTY-ONE, ALEXIA DUCHÊNE WAS ALREADY COMPETING FOR THE TITLE OF TOP CHEF FRANCE–THOUGH THE SHOW HAD BEEN COURTING HER FOR YEARS. AMBITIOUS, CREATIVE, AND ALL ALLERGIC TO SENTIMENTALITY, SHE'S LESS INTERESTED IN REVISITING THE PAST THAN IN REBUILDING IT FROM SCRATCH. AT LE CHÊNE, HER RESTAURANT ON CARMINE STREET, SHE WANTS TO PROVE THAT FRENCH COOKING CAN BE DOWN TO EARTH, EVEN WHEN IT'S WRAPPED IN PUFF PASTRY.
Words by Marcelo Jaimes Lukes
Photography by Sacha Maric
Alexia Duchêne doesn’t seem like the nostalgic type. The French chef speaks about the past the way most people speak about an ex: politely, but with no desire to revisit.
“I’m not too much into memories,” she tells me after I inquire about the philosophy driving her cooking. “I like to create my own thing.”
I can’t help but smile as I look around the Carmine Street dining room. To me, the elegant space—Le Chêne—inspired by the chef’s woody surname, feels like a Parisian memory. Maybe it’s more my idealization of one: velvet banquettes, art-deco sconces, and the smell of butter wafting from the kitchen.
Duchêne speaks with the composed thoughtfulness of someone who has spent her twenties in kitchens that have demanded both precision and a sort of self-punishment. Her eye contact is direct, her white shirt is pressed as deliberately as her tablecloths, and she cracks a slight smile as she tells me about her youth.
“I started cooking when I was 15,” Duchêne says matter-of-factly. “I like to have a five-year plan, even back then.” Her parents were entrepreneurs —her mother, raised in Egypt and Greece, taught the chef about stuffed vine leaves, pine nuts, and fattoush salads. Her father taught Duchêne about the heritage of his native Normandy: cream, apples, and Boudin blanc. “There were so many great ingredients in my childhood,” she says. “But, honestly, I’m not nostalgic.”
TRY AND TRY AGAIN
Duchêne tells me that the most important part of becoming a chef is repetition. I’ve heard this before, I tell her. Some of the best chefs insist that creativity comes second to consistency. She nods along. “As a chef, yes, I’m creative,” she says, “but the main job is repetition. I have to do something over and over until it becomes natural.”
That drive, to do something over and over, seems to thread the chef’s career. She tells me that only half a decade after she started cooking, she was a sous chef in Paris. A year later, she was on Top Chef France. I ask her how it feels to have been the youngest contestant on the show. She corrects me— “I was the youngest woman to make it that far.”
Duchêne only agreed to do the show after years of saying no. I ask her why—isn’t that every young chef’s dream? She shrugs. “I didn’t have anything to say yet. I didn’t have any perspective. As a chef, it’s important to develop your voice, your style. At 18, I was still figuring that out.”
Her takeaway from Top Chef France sounds like something she might now tell a young cook on the line: Don’t force it. “When you’re young, you want to prove yourself. You want to do a thousand things on one plate,” she says. “But you learn—two or three elements, made perfectly, are better than seven that just compete for attention.” The chefs she looks up to now, she says, are pairing things back. “They’re confident in their style.”
MADE FROM SCRATCH
By the time she moved to New York to explore its culinary scene, Duchêne was ready to share the craft perspective that she had spent over a decade crafting. “I felt free in my culinary vision,” Duchêne says. She stops and corrects herself, “Or maybe, I’m free now. Then, I felt like I finally had one.”
Duchêne first came to New York for a residency at Fulgurances Laundromat in Brooklyn, an incubator for young culinary talent. She stayed in the city for a project in Fort Greene that “didn’t work out.” She’s diplomatic about it—different visions, different definitions of hospitality—but you can tell she doesn’t hold a grudge. “Hospitality means different things to different people. That doesn’t upset me.”
Duchêne and her husband, Ronan Duchêne Le May, decided that they wanted to pursue their own vision of hospitality, so they got to work building a restaurant “from scratch.”
“When we first started, we didn’t know anyone,” she says. “It was quite rough—humbling, even.” Building a restaurant meant seeking investors, finding a space, and thinking beyond the menu. “We had to develop the guts to speak to folks in finance about our project. She smiles slightly as she says the word investors. “It’s not always romantic, but it’s real.”
New York seems to be having a revived interest in French classics, I tell Duchêne. Reservations at restaurants like Le Veau D’Or and Chez Fifi have become among the hardest to secure. She jumps in without skipping a beat.
“French food has always been here,” she says. “But at least in France, after COVID, people wanted rich, comforting dishes. Sometimes we forget that it was a tough time. People want reassurance.” There’s a familiarity in French dishes, Duchêne explains.
She’s quick to clarify that Le Chêne is not a run-of-the-mill bistro. “There’s no steak au poivre here,” she says with a chuckle. “Not everything here is what people think of when they think of French food.”
So what is French food, then? Duchêne hesitates to define the boundaries of the cuisine, but notes that her team seeks to avoid making dishes “fussy.”
“We’re cosmopolitan because Paris is cosmopolitan. We want to show that French food is more than cream and butter. French food has a range.”
THE PERFECT ARROZ NEGRO
Now a permanent resident of New York, Duchêne delights in the city’s culinary institutions. “I was at Estela last night,” she says, before singing Ignacio Mattos’ praises. “He’s one of the chefs who inspired me the most when I came here eight years ago. His food is purely New York.” When I ask about her favorite dishes, she nearly lists the entire menu.
Other spots wow her with their logistics. “When I go to Torrisi and see them do that many covers, I’m impressed,” Duchêne says. “Cosme is another place that impresses me. That dining room is iconic.”
When I ask about what’s next, she shrugs. Unlike in her teen years, there’s no five-year plan. “I’m just excited to be here every day,” she says. “I’m happy to be here, to do service day in and day out and get better and see the progress in my team and myself.”
Then, almost as an afterthought: “Of course, you have dreams of opening different concepts. But right now, this feels good.”
In a city that runs on the thrill of the novel, Duchêne’s commitment to the moment is distinctive. She’s interested in the rhythmic, repetitive, disciplined process of showing up again and again to her Carmine street kitchen.
“Food should nourish your body and your brain,” she says, as her team enters the dining room to start dinner service. “We’re not saving lives. We’re here to make people happy.”
LE CHÊNE
76 Carmine St,
New York, NY 10014