Air France taps its Saulieu two-star chef for Business meals

Air France has named Louis-Philippe Vigilant, the Air France chef now heading the two-Michelin-starred Relais Bernard Loiseau in Saulieu, Burgundy, as its new signature chef for Business-cabin meals on flights leaving the French Caribbean and French Guiana.

The new menu starts on 1 November 2026, on long-haul routes from Pointe-à-Pitre, Fort-de-France, Saint-Martin and Cayenne to Paris-Charles de Gaulle, plus selected flights within the airline's regional Caribbean network.

Vigilant, who was born in Martinique, joined the kitchen in Saulieu in 2006 as a commis chef and rose through the ranks under chef Patrick Bertron, the address's longtime head chef. He returned as deputy head chef in January 2022 and now runs the kitchen that carries Bernard Loiseau's two stars.

A two-star sauce still has to survive a trolley and a reheat, wherever it was written.

From a Burgundy kitchen to 30,000 feet

He worked with Servair, Air France's in-flight catering partner, to develop twelve dishes built around local and seasonal ingredients, a brief shaped as much by galley constraints as by his own repertoire. The dishes will reach the menu progressively over the coming months, rather than all at once.

Two dishes are named in the airline's own material: a pot-au-feu of fish and shellfish with Madras curry sauce and ginger vegetables, and a braised beef cheek in a Burgundy-style sauce, served with mashed potato made with Cazette hazelnut. The wider menu also runs to vegetarian, fish, red meat and poultry options.

Premium cabin meals on the same routes stay with Frédéric Simonin, chef of his own one-Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris, whose arrangement with the airline is unchanged. Business passengers can pre-select their hot dish up to 24 hours before departure, a policy Air France frames as a way to cut food waste on board.

A fourth name on the Caribbean roster

Air France describes Vigilant as the fourth chef it has called on for these Caribbean and Guiana departures, a line that has included Marcel Ravin in 2019 and Guadeloupe-born Babette de Rozières in 2017. The airline has leaned on named, regionally rooted chefs for this route group for close to a decade now.

Whether a Burgundy sauce holds its character after a galley reheat is the usual question with airline fine dining — a different conversation entirely from the one at ground level, where Bruno Verjus recently called fine dining dead as he closed his Paris restaurant Table. Vigilant's dishes arrive gradually from November, which gives passengers on the Antilles run several months to find out.