Lionel Debon
Executive Chef / Culinary Director
“From the French Alpes to Cocody”
The invitation to join a star team as a chef de cuisine – his first job in the United States – was readily accepted, although being associated with stars was not unfamiliar territory for Debon at the time. Most of his career was associated with them – the Michelin kind.
As far back as 1990, Debon was in a Michelin star kitchen at the Hotel du Rhone in Geneva, Switzerland. A year later, he was a cook at the Hotel Europole in Grenoble, Rhone-Alpes, France. As his career advanced his experiences included the kitchens of the Hotel Martinez in Cannes with its two stars; Le Bateau Ivre in Le Bourger-du-Lac, France with two stars; Hotel Restaurant La Villa Florentine with one star; the Restaurant La Pyramide in Vienne, France with two stars; and the Restaurant l’Alexandrin in Lyon with one star.
Debon was born in the French Alps in a small town in the Matheysine valley between two snow-topped mountains and with lakes, farms and forests all around. His growing up had all the makings of an epic screenplay.
Exploring the mountains surrounding his home, he picked mushrooms in the forest and berries from bushes and pulled fish from the lakes and rivers and crawfish from the wet banks. He learned to make pastries and resourceful ways to use the many things that came from farm animals and the family garden. It began in him a deep appreciation for fresh ingredients and playful ways of arranging them into delectable dishes.
At around age 15, he was working at Hotel du Parc while enrolled in a cooking school in Grenoble, France, and at that point, his future was set.
As his career advanced – interrupted by a one-year stint in the army during which he drove a tank – Debon worked throughout France and then Switzerland and even shortly in Venezuela. The path led him to the restaurant Le Moulin de la Camandoule in Fayence, which by coincidence was owned by a man from Houston, Texas, David Huber. Toward the end of his fifth year at the restaurant, Huber asked if he would be interested in coming to the United States for work.
Joining the brothers, Denis at Le Mistral Restaurant in its new and enlarged location, Debon quickly established himself among Houston’s chefs. Next, he was hired as the manager and chef de cuisine for Alba Restaurant at the Hotel Granduca where he remained through the trials of the COVID-19 pandemic and afterwards.