Rennes chefs build community to support local food
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In Rennes, France, chefs and food producers collaborate to strengthen the local food system.
Chef Romain Joly regularly connects with vendors at the Lices market, offering his restaurant’s kitchen to new catering businesses and sourcing ingredients from farmers like Annie Bertin, who trusts customers to self-serve and pay. This spirit of cooperation extends to established restaurants like IMA, where chef Julien Lemarié has shared supplier contacts and participated in group purchases since arriving in 2012.
The city has fostered a sense of camaraderie among chefs, unlike some other places where competition creates tension. Joly creates dishes like beef gravlax and tomato sorbet with goat cheese mousse, while Bertin grows her own seeds. Lemarié and others also pool resources, such as algae harvested by Valérie and Jean-Marie Pédron from the Guérande peninsula, a coastal region in France.
