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This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
‘Fusion’ is a word Mory Sacko has banned from his vocabulary. “We don’t blend gastronomies — it’s more of a dialogue between different cultures,” he says of Mosuke, his first restaurant, which opened its doors in Paris in 2020. French, African and Japanese cuisines are on the menu and each dish is a triptych of ingredients, flavours and textures.
“It’s a cuisine that doesn’t exist anywhere else, because through it I’m telling my own story,” Sacko says. And it’s a story he wears on his sleeve — literally. At work, he dresses in the white jacket traditionally worn by French chefs, but he’s had it customised: it’s adorned with African wax print motifs, and instead of a classic double-breasted design, it wraps around like a Japanese kimono.
Sacko was the first of eight siblings born in France. His Malian father worked in construction, while his mother, who was raised in Senegal, was a cleaner. Sacko grew up in the Paris suburb of Seine-et-Marne, where his parents spoke two languages — Soninke and Bambara — at home, and largely cooked West African food. At the same time, the young Sacko harboured a love of Japanese manga and anime. Bowls of ramen and onigiri were central to programmes like Naruto, Pokémon and One Piece, and he couldn’t help but wonder whether the cartoon dishes on screen could be as good in real life as they seemed.
When he was in his mid-teens, Sacko enrolled in a specialist hospitality and catering secondary school before going on to work in kitchens professionally. It was working with chef Hans Zahner at the Michelin-starred Le Royal Monceau – Raffles Paris, and being challenged to create a new dish, that really sparked a fire within him. “I started thinking gastronomy and going to sleep imagining dishes,” Sacko says.
Inspired by his childhood passion for Japan, Sacko began experimenting with ingredients such as miso, yuzu and togarashi (a spice blend), which complemented his training in classic French cuisine. He also tapped into his African heritage through several — failed — attempts at recreating his mother’s mafé (peanut stew). “I told myself, ‘Instead of chasing that specific flavour, make your own recipe’,” he recalls. So, Sacko decided to use miso paste as seasoning, resulting in a reinvented dish that retained the comfort-food quality of mafé, but with added umami complexity.
Wanting to devote more time to experimenting and developing his own style of cuisine, Sacko opened Mosuke. The restaurant’s name is a combination of Sacko’s own first name and that of Yasuke, a 16th-century African man — likely from Mozambique — who escaped slavery and became a samurai in feudal Japan. Yasuke is regarded as the only Black samurai in history, and Sacko wanted to integrate the story into his establishment to represent the bridging of African and Japanese cultures. It’s an approach that’s proving popular — tables are snapped up as soon as bookings are made available, months in advance.
Mory Sacko’s street food restaurant, Mosugo, aims to make gourmet food more accessible.
Photograph by Virginie Garnier
Part of a new generation ushering cultural diversity into French gastronomy, Sacko is one of few chefs of colour to be in the spotlight in France. He appeared as a contestant on the French edition of Top Chef in 2020 and has starred in his own cooking programme, Cuisine Ouverte (‘Open Kitchen’), which aired this year on French TV. In 2022, Sacko was chosen to cook for President Emmanuel Macron at an Africa-France summit.
All this recognition is worlds away from the culinary scene when Sacko was starting out — when he’d look around in vain for Black chef role models. “If there’s one thing I can do, it’s inspire others and show that being a Black chef and aiming for a Michelin star isn’t something out of the ordinary,” he says. Sacko’s restaurant received its star in 2021. Today, the chef is inspired by fellow Black chefs Marcel Ravin, whose Monte Carlo restaurant Blue Bay received the first of two Michelin stars in 2015, as well as his friend Georgiana Viou, whose Nice restaurant Rouge was awarded one earlier this year.
In addition to promoting racial diversity, Sacko is also committed to sustainability. “If we want to keep practising this craft in the next 30 years, we have to find solutions,” he says. His gastronomic inspirations may be far-flung, but Sacko is keen to import as few ingredients as possible. For instance, he’s experimenting with making his own miso, rather than ordering it from Japan. Instead of producing it using the traditional koji beans, his team is working on fermenting black-eyed beans, which originate from Africa. The process takes two months and will provide the restaurant with enough miso to last a year. For Japanese citrus fruits such as yuzu and sudachi, meanwhile, Sacko works with a farmer in the French region of Carcassonne. Whenever imports are necessary, Sacko ensures produce is harvested in season and preserved to last as long as possible. Such is the case with Côte d’Ivoire chilli peppers, which are dried and fermented.
Despite running a fine-dining restaurant — and having appeared as the guest chef at luxury brand Louis Vuitton’s Saint-Tropez hotel last summer — it’s important to Sacko that his food is as accessible as possible. “Twenty years ago, Michelin-starred restaurants were reserved for an elite. Today, eating well can be shared much more easily,” he says. “Social media has made gastronomy more democratic.”
Indeed, some of his followers contacted him, telling him they wanted to try his food but couldn’t afford the cost of dining at Mosuke. That prompted him to launch Mosugo, a street food restaurant that’s also held pop-ups across Paris. The concept is gourmet reimaginings of classic fast food, such as a fried chicken burger with miso mayonnaise, pickled cucumber and Emmental cheese. “I don’t want to be seen as this fine-dining chef perched in his ivory tower with a €200 menu,” says Sacko. “I want to make my cuisine available to as many people as possible so everyone can get a taste.”
This autumn, Sacko added a new central Paris restaurant, Lafayette’s, to his roster, serving French- and American-inspired dishes in a brasserie-style setting. At the same time, he remains hands-on at Mosuke, even closing the restaurant when he’s away. Despite a clear dedication to his craft, he’s pretty relaxed about what diners make of his food. “As soon as the dish is served, it no longer belongs to me,” he says. “It belongs to the customer who will find in it what resonates with them.”
Published in Issue 22 (winter 2023) of Food by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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