Chef Pascal Nebout on Legacy

Chef Pascal Nebout runs the kitchen at Maison Martell’s Château de Chanteloup in Cognac, France. His passion for cuisine started at a young age, when he spent afternoons helping his great-grandmother in the kitchen. After nearly 30 years of cooking and travelling in France and abroad, Pascal returned to the region of Charente, a place he loves, and set down his knives in the Château de Chanteloup, where he expresses his gastronomic passions and bold culinary expertise. His signature touch, a famously refined take on surf-and-turf, will mark the Château’s team and VIP guests for years to come.

Pascal Nebout is the head chef at Maison Martell’s Château de Chanteloup in France’s Cognac region. His passion for cuisine started at a tender young age when he spent afternoons helping his great-grandmother in the kitchen. She worked as a cook and Pascal often found himself acting as her sous-chef. In those moments, he set his sights on becoming a master of cuisine. After nearly 30 years of cooking and travelling in France and abroad, to places like Taiwan, Tokyo and St. Petersburg, Pascal returned to the region of Charente, a terroir he loves, and he set down his knives in the kitchen of the Château de Chanteloup. 

For Pascal, cooking requires generosity, a love for people and a desire to please. At the luxurious Château de Chanteloup, he welcomes Maison Martell’s most important guests with elegant, unforgettable experiences. His surprising signature touch, decadent and famously refined surf-and-turf dishes, will mark the Château’s team and VIP guests for years to come. Those combinations, when executed by his delicate and expert skills, are magical for Pascal, and of course, for those fortunate enough to dine at the Château.

Pascal also loves the daring, adventurous side of cooking, the discovery and innovation that comes with asking questions and taking risks in the kitchen. For Pascal, cooking is just as thrilling as riding his motorcycle through Cognac’s alluring landscape.

One of Pascal’s deepest pleasures, both in and out of the kitchen, is appreciating the many sensory experiences of food and drink. His passion for fine cognac makes perfect sense. Pascal revels in a pour of Martell XO, admiring its colours and aromas, and always trying to discover its layered, hidden flavours. He drinks his XO neat. When it comes to pairing Martell cognacs with food, Pascal finds that the possibilities are infinite.

As a celebrated chef, Pascal works tirelessly to reinvent and broaden his own cuisine. His kitchen is an open book, a place without secrets, where he expresses and shares his gastronomic creativity. Unlike many other master chefs, he shares openly what he has learned from his own mentors, transmitting his cultivated “savoir-faire,” or know-how, to his own apprentices in the kitchen. He considers this exchange of knowledge — of culinary legacy — as a responsibility.

Chef Pascal Nebout bears this responsibility with pride, and his commitment translates into each and every dish served at the Château de Chanteloup.