Sylvain Portay

Corporate Chef

Alain Ducasse Enterprise: Le Louis XV, Monte Carlo; Mix, Las Vegas, NV; and Adour, New York, NY

A native of Evian-Les Bains, France, Chef Sylvain Portay began his career in 1976 as an apprentice with Chef Jean-Louis Palladin at La Table des Cordeliers in Condom, France. Two years later, he moved to Chef Palladin’s Jean-Louis Restaurant in Washington, D.C. and, two years after that, he returned to France and spent the next decade working alternately with Chefs Jacques Maximin at Le Chantecler and Alain Ducasse at La Terrasse. Sylvain was chef de cuisine under Alain Ducasse at Le Louis XV in Monte Carlo when it received three Michelin stars in 1990.

Between 1992 to 1996, Sylvain was executive chef at New York’s famed Le Cirque and from 1996 to 2004, he was the chef at The Ritz-Carlton’s Dining Room in San Francisco. The Dining Room is one of only 13 restaurants in North America to earn the coveted Mobil Five Star award and has continuously earned AAA’s Five Diamond rating since 1996.

In 2004, Sylvain joined the Alain Ducasse Enterprise to work as a corporate chef representing Alain Ducasse’s standards in the management of the kitchen and was put in charge of the opening of Mix in Las Vegas in 2004, which received one Michelin star.

Since then, Sylvain has opened three restaurants: the Adour at the St. Regis hotel in New York, which received two Michelin stars, the Benoit Bistro in New York and the Adour restaurant at the St. Regis hotel in Washington DC. Today Sylvain helps the Alain Ducasse Enterprise operate more than 20 restaurants worldwide.