A small cafe run almost singlehandedly by a British chef has been named France’s best village bistro.

Manchester-born Chris Wright set up the Epicerie de Dienne as a shop-cum-cafe in a remote village in the mountainous Cantal region of central France in June.

With Dienne having less than 200 permanent residents, the self-taught cook wasn’t expecting crowds.

“I wanted it to be a low-key thing,” said the 44-year-old, who was looking for a bit of a break after spending more than a decade cooking and serving day and night at Le Timbre (French for The Postage Stamp), a tiny but much-loved Parisian eatery.

“Looking at it from that point of view, it’s been a bit of a disaster. I was hoping to wind down with a quiet little place where you could get a nice slice of ham and cheese. I failed there,” he laughed.

Word spread quickly around the Auvergne Volcanoes regional park in which the village is located. “By mid-July it was mad and I had to get a bit of help,” said Wright, hours before he received the prize from Le Fooding, France’s trendiest food and restaurant guide.

The same guide listed Marks & Spencer as one of the best places for takeaway food in Paris.



Parisians have long had a love affair with M&S and there was an outcry when it pulled out of France in 2001. But it returned five years ago and now has 18 outlets in and around the capital.

Le Fooding picked out its quinoa, avocado and Brazil nut salad, Devon scones and vegan vegetable Kiev for particular praise.

Wright was one of several foreign-born chefs honoured by the guide, with the Italian Giovanni Passerini named chef of the year for his “modern trattoria” in Paris.

Le Fooding, known for its unstuffy cosmopolitan approach, also honoured the Japanese chefs Katsuaki Okiyama, for his Parisian restaurants Abri and Abri Soba, and Moko Hirayama, for her eatery Mokonuts.

Wright said he was a big fan of cabbage and loved marrying it with Cantal’s sausages, charcuterie and cheese.

“The locals have been great. Quite of a lot of people knew of me because I have been coming down for the last eight years or so and I love the food from around here,” he said.

“Others probably thought that (being English) I wouldn’t be capable of much more than a sandwich.”

Having closed the cafe for the winter, Wright plans to reopen for the February holidays, and then from May to October.

Whether he has found the peace he was looking for when he moved to the country is another matter. “Not really,” he joked. “But I don’t regret it. I love it there.”

• This article was amended on 8 August 2019 because an earlier version referred to honoring Moko Hirayama, for “his eatery Mokonuts”. This has been corrected to her eatery.