Hugo, training chef.
Born in France, trained between Montreal and Lyon, Hugo charted a course on which reason eventually gave way to passion. From his two grandmothers' kitchens to the Michelin-starred brigades of France, by way of the finest tables of Vieux-Montréal and an eight-year detour through the family tech company — he learned that exacting standard the hard way, before bringing it to Lima in 2025 to build La Crème de la Crème.
— The inheritance
Two grandmothers, two kitchens.
France · childhood
It all begins at a child's eye level, around two kitchen tables. An Italian grandmother — of pasta rolled out in the morning, sauces left to simmer until evening, flavours built slowly. A French grandmother — of discipline, of cold butter, of desserts done properly.
Hugo spends whole weeks with them, summer after summer — peeling, kneading, tasting, beginning again. He learns to cook not from a book, but through the gesture, at a child's height, at an apron's height. And he carries away two things that have never left him: a taste for precision, and a love of sharing. Everything he pours into the house today was set down, first, in those kitchens.
— The memory
Even further, the memory.
France · further back still
Further back in the family's memory stand Amélie and Jules — Hugo's French great-great-grandparents. A France that took its time, that lingered at the counter, that saw a café as a matter of conversation as much as of coffee. That era Hugo never knew first-hand; he inherited it through family stories, yellowed photographs, Sunday madeleines. It is something of that vanished world — its rhythm, its care, its pleasure of being at table — that the house seeks, today, to bring back to life.
— A first detour
A first detour through economy.
Montreal · the student years
After his baccalauréat — a science track completed in France — Hugo sets off for Canada. A family decision as much as a longing for new horizons. In Montreal, he enrols at the Université de Montréal, the largest French-speaking university in North America, and reads economics.
Several years of diligent study, at the end of which he earns his degree — ready, on paper, for the life of a young executive. Except that on paper, precisely, the essential was missing: as far back as he can remember, the kitchen had never stopped calling him.
— The return to the kitchen
Start over, from the ground up.
Montreal · the great turning point
On the eve of entering the working world, Hugo makes the hardest decision of his journey — one guided by passion rather than reason. He walks away from a future executive career and enrols in a French culinary school at the lowest rung, as an apprentice. Starting over, apron and all. Several years of relentless study later, he graduates near the top of his class.
Diploma in hand, he earns his stripes in a handful of small kitchens in Vieux-Montréal, before joining the neighbourhood's most distinguished tables. The hand sharpens, the palate is schooled, the discipline takes root. He knows, by then, that he will do nothing else.
— The Michelin dream
The starry dream, the hard way.
Lyon · the French school
One dream remained — the dream of every young chef trained in the French tradition: to cook in a Michelin-starred kitchen, in France. His Canadian reputation opens a precious door in Lyon, at the brasserie of one of France's greatest Michelin-starred chefs: Paul Bocuse. The adventure, though, does not unfold as he had dreamed it. The brasserie's head chef, of the old school, takes a dim view of a young man from Canada joining the ranks through the front door. Hugo is given a true baptism by fire — the kind that shakes you, but forges you.
Undaunted, he bounces back at another Lyon establishment — this time a two-Michelin-star house. There, the experience proves fully formative: it is where he acquires the genuine savoir-faire of French cuisine, the discipline of service, the obsession with detail — the grammar of an école d'excellence that he still speaks today.
— The interlude
A parenthesis of eight years.
Montreal · an interlude
Hugo was born into a family of entrepreneurs. Logically, the next step ought to have been his own — to open his own restaurant. The opportunity duly appears: taking over an Italian trattoria at the heart of Montreal. He returns to Canada to give the project every chance of succeeding. But the deal, all but signed, falls apart on the final stretch, between lawyers. A disappointment that, in the moment, makes him question the whole profession.
Hugo then joins the family company — a tech firm specialising in emerging technologies, founded by his father and his elder brother Jules. He comes in at the smallest door, at the very bottom of the ladder. For eight years he climbs the rungs one by one, until he is running the Canadian arm of the business. Cooking, all the while, is still there — muffled, faithful, never quite extinguished.
— The return
Lima, back to the kitchen.
Lima · 2023 — 2025
Everything tips in 2023, at Jules's wedding — Jules by then settled in Peru for several years. There, Hugo meets the woman who will become his wife. Two years later, in 2025, he marries her in turn, in Lima, and decides to put down his bags there for good.
That is when the passion comes galloping back. With Jules at his side — the brother with whom he had already shared eight years in tech in Canada — Hugo sketches out, alone at first, in his apartment in Lima, the concept of La Crème de la Crème. A menu, an atmosphere, a standard. Then he invites Jules to join him. The house is born.
— The two brothers
Two brothers, one house.
Hugo and Jules are not teaming up for the first time. Eight years side by side in Canada, inside the family tech company — Hugo coming up from the bottom, Jules at the helm — until Hugo ended up running the Canadian branch. When Lima finally gave cooking back its rightful place, it was almost a given that Jules would be in. This time around a counter, a pastry case, a French brand to build together. Hugo, the chef; Jules, the engineer. Two temperaments, one shared standard.
« La Crème de la Crème was born from a conversation between two brothers who simply wanted to create the café they would have liked to walk into. »
— His signature
The signature piece.
If you had to taste only one thing to understand the house, this would be it. The contrast, the roundness, the pinch of salt, the precision in the very cooking — a balance Hugo works like a piece of fine jewellery. The whole of his story sits on this plate.
« The signature dish — the one that lets you understand the house. »
