French solo chef Benjamin Ferrand of Victoria Del Mar on winning the Superyacht Chef Competition and the value of tradition.
In 2007 in Port de Nice, my first wife’s captain called me because the chef did not arrive at work and he needed a chef for an owner’s trip to Nice and Saint-Tropez. I stayed on board for the entire summer season.
Before working at a Michelin-starred restaurant, I trained at Paul Augier in Nice — coming from five generations of hoteliers and chefs in my family. I started as solo chef on a small boat and now am solo on a 164-foot boat.
The cooking and time element was fine in the Superyacht Chef Competition at the Monaco Yacht Club — the cameras and photography, plus having the public watching, was the most challenging part. After winning, I have more trust in myself than before. I love cooking and want to learn more, improve and continue competing with myself.
I love working with the rich spices of the Mediterranean and beyond. I source them from a small, soulful shop in Old Nice called Girofle et Cannelle. There, I find treasures like saffron from the plains of Taliouine in Morocco; Timut pepper from Nepal adds its unique citrusy kick, and Penja pepper from Cameroon brings a deep, earthy heat. Guérande sea salt, hand-harvested on the French Atlantic coast, brings balance to every dish, and Hungarian paprika, smoky and sweet, is a cornerstone of Eastern European warmth. These are not just ingredients — they’re stories, cultures and memories I bring into every plate I serve.
My favorite cuisine is old French. It reminds me where I’m from and of my family, particularly lamb shoulder and potatoes gratin.
Every chef should know how to make bouillabaisse. It was the first dish I truly loved and the first one I really learned to master. I was 17, still in culinary school and already known as the “bouillabaisse chef,” making more than a hundred bouillabaisses a day. It felt like something glorious — to understand a recipe like that, so rich in tradition. Even now, I can tell a lot about a person just by the quality of their bouillabaisse.
The strangest request I’ve received is for meatballs with whisky at four in the morning.