Restaurant Le Meurice

Everybody's talking about Yannick All‚no - or at least, everybody in Paris. The 35-year-old chef was the only one to go up from one Michelin star to two this year, and he managed to do it just five months after settling in at the sumptuous H"tel Meurice on the Rue de Rivoli.

"It's like a dream," he grins. "It's the ultimate reference, isn't it? Though it's not the most important thing," he adds, hurriedly. "The most important thing is to have customers." Of course, there is no shortage of those at the moment, with a waiting list as long as your arm, the hotel's sweet PR, Geraldine, tells me delightedly.

The French press are not exactly short of praise for him, either. Le Figaro declared his arrival last August "the gastronomic event of the year", while a critic for the New York Times gushed recently, "All‚no is one to watch."

Well, he's already arrived, mate. In fact, he arrived a couple of years back, when he was awarded his first second Michelin star (keep up) while cooking at the Hotel Scribe, also in the city.

He has taken some of those dishes with him to the H"tel Meurice, including the roasted Maine pigeon with artichokes and foie gras, with the legs in a consomm‚; and the sea bass fillet with apple caramel, sea urchin, gnocchi and seasonal greens; plus the shelled Brittany crab claws with citrus fruit jelly, herb-infused crab cream and oscietra caviar.

Others he has developed along the way, such as the distinctly Mediterranean-influenced flavours of baby artichoke, pared halfway down and cleverly "re-leafed" with courgette skin and filled with a mixture of crab and langoustine; turbot with truffle cooked in a clay crust with celeriac cream and flat parsley coulis; and seared tuna loin with aubergine pur‚e.

It's a clich‚, I know, and the detailed menu descriptions wouldn't have you believe it, but his food is deceptively simple. My favourite All‚no moments were the mussel "custard" (mussel cooking water and eggs) with oscietra caviar pressed into the top, that came with perfectly cooked langoustine tails and a celery infusion; and the subtle ginger notes that lifted the silky sweet onion ravioli, which in turn complemented the poached, sliced Wagyu beef flecked generously with black truffles.

So who is All‚no and where is he from? He grew up in a small village in the Auvergne, not far from Michel Bras's place in Laguiole. Not that he has ever borrowed any particular dishes from the region. "We moved to Paris when I was seven years old," he explains.

His parents bought a caf‚ in the 14th arrondissement, developing it later into a small hotel, with Ma All‚no installed in the kitchen. "It was bistro food, very simple food. The things that I remember particularly are her parmentiers and her soups," he says, a tad wistfully.

From the age of eight, All‚no would regularly help his mother in the kitchen. "I decided straight away that this was what I wanted to do," he declares. So keen was he that he even wrote a letter to the great Lyons chef, Paul Bocuse, asking if he could go and see him. "He was very sweet. He wrote back," he tells me.

As it turned out, he has never actually worked for Bocuse. "Though he will always be a huge influence - he's a god for me," he says. "When I first saw him, in 1987, I was like a kid meeting Zidane for the first time." And he did come second in the Bocuse d'Or competition in 1999 - which he singles out as a significant time in his career.

Another defining moment took place a littler earlier in his life - at 12 years old. He was driving through the village of Saulieu with his parents when they stopped to have a look - though not eat - at Bernard Loiseau. "I was intrigued by the dishes. It made a big impression on me," admits All‚no. This was followed, some years later, when his parents packed him off to work as a stagiaire at gastronomic Paris heavyweight the Louis XIII under executive chef Emmanuel Martinez. "To make sure that I really wanted to be a cook," he explains.

Well, he did, and eventually landed a position as sous chef for Louis Grondard at the two-Michelin-starred Restaurant Drouant, also in Paris. "Grondard played a big part in my training. It was the whole disciple thing. I learnt everything from him. Together we made food with a capital F," declares All‚no.

His career path continued upwards, with his next significant move taking him to the Hotel Scribe as head chef of Les Muses, where he kept hold of a Michelin star and won a second after just two years. "Bocuse helped me get the job, putting a good word in for me after the Champagne Mumm Michelin dinner held in Greenwich in 1999," he grins. "The dinner was on a Sunday and I started on the Tuesday."

So where does All‚no get his ideas from? "I'm not influenced by any particular region. I pull in ingredients and ideas from all over the place. In fact, I would say I make Parisian food. Not that there is a terroir in Paris to speak of - though we do refer to it as the garden of France, there's that much variety here.

"And, of course, I'm in one of the grandest hotels in the world, so I'm influenced by that, too. All I can tell you is that I try to do my best every day. I think the solution is here; not from getting ideas when eating out or travelling."

Of course, he does eat out - and often. He went to Spanish Mecca, El Bulli, for the first time last year and was hugely impressed. "But the problem for me is when other chefs - the new generation - want to cook like this. It's not their own cooking," he declares. "And I don't feel I have to use any of these kinds of techniques in my cooking. Low-temperature cooking? We've been doing it for years. Agar-agar? I started using that a long time ago. Don't get me wrong: I love Ferran's cooking, because it's from Ferran. I just don't like Ferran's food made by others."

All‚no changes the menu about eight times a year, though not all at once, he says. Does he have any favourites at the moment? "They're all favourites, though my next menu is always the best one," he grins, gazing past me, teasing his hair into a Rhodes-esque spike with a little help from the wall of mirrors behind me.

"There's no food I don't like when it's executed well," he adds, after a pause. "When food is good, there's nothing better, and that's that."

A selection from the menu

• Sea scallop salad with truffled vinaigrette, g60 (£40)
• Lightly smoked back of Balik salmon in potato scales with a leek cream and French caviar, g66 (£44)
• Glazed asparagus with bone marrow and Parmesan cheese and dried ham jus, g48 (£32)
• Thick fillet of John Dory crusted with caraway seeds and smoky-flavoured green cabbage, g78 (£52)
• Lamb chops from Quercy, Champvallon-style, lettuce and herb salad, and traditional jus, g60 (£40)
• Veal sweetbreads deglazed with Vin Jaune and salsify cooked in truffle jus, g48 (£32)
• Red mullet with pissalat, shellfish stew and codfish accras, g58 (£38.50)
• Chocolate crispy puff sheets, mango and passion fruit, g20 (£13.30)
• Banana gratin with praline, exotic fruit sorbet, g20 (£13.30)
• Roasted small apple, honey ice-cream and crispy tuile, g20 (£13.30)