Marzouk’s original interest in cooking came from the fact that his father is a pâtissier specialising in North African pastries, while his mother is a restaurateur. “I’ve always been interested in food,” says Marzouk, recalling how watching Bon Appétit Bien Sûr, the late Joël Robuchon’s TV cookery show, as a child further stoked his interest in a culinary career. His parents, however, wanted their children to have more prestigious professions, so Youssef got a degree in chemistry before eventually returning to his first love, cooking. His fascinating career began in the kitchen of the Ritz hotel in Paris and has included stints as pastry chef and assistant chef with chef Tomy Gousset and then at Le Cheval Blanc, where he was captivated by the work and signature sauces of Michelin three-star chef Arnaud Donckele. His small, intimate restaurant in the Marais has an open kitchen and is decorated with objects from Tunisia, plus family mementos and mostly Tunisian faience.
“My cooking tells the story of me and my family,” says Marzouk, and after three amuse-bouches – a tiny tartlette of finely-riced carrot seasoned with cumin, girolles in tapenade façon Bonne Maman, and a sublime miniature tomato salad with burrata and orange-flower water – I immediately deciphered the secret ingredients that are consistently present in Marzouk’s cooking: his sincerity and his prodigious intelligence. Our first course – a beautiful, succulent bite that reminded us that the Mediterranean world has a deep, shared culinary culture of ingredients and techniques, including artichokes, figs, olives, oil and capers – was a miniature Roman Jewish style artichoke garnished with fig. A plate of exquisitely delicate duck-filled ravioli came in a luscious sauce Phnom Penh, an edible souvenir of Marzouk’s travels in Southeast Asia, yellow pollack with a stuffed zucchini flower and a sunny yellow sauce of fresh turmeric was suddenly shyer, while the lamb that followed was stunningly refined with an espuma of mechouia, a Tunisian condiment of tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic and pepper.