Chef with Macon ties attracts attention to his Paris soul food restaurant during Olympics
In a foreign city where food reigns supreme, a restaurant with ties to Macon is the talk of the town.
More than 4,000 miles away from Middle Georgia, locals and tourists alike would be hard pressed to miss Gumbo YaYa Southern Kitchen, the bright red restaurant at 3 rue Charles Robin in Paris.
The restaurant, owned by chef Lionel Chauvel-Maga and started in 2015, is located in Paris’ 10th District. Since opening, the eatery has won awards, grown in popularity and drawn several big-named American artists such as Tyler, the Creator; Frank Ocean; and Lil Yachty.
During the 2024 Paris Olympics, Gumbo YaYa Southern Kitchen was mentioned by Essence Magazine, Cuisine Noir and others as the place to eat for Southern comfort food.
The inspiration
After previously owning a deli-style restaurant in Paris, Chauvel-Maga used his travels to visit his family in the United States, specifically Macon, to inspire his version of Southern comfort food.
From there, he took his knowledge and opened the first comfort food eatery in Paris, named after the gumbo-like dish made popular by late chef Paul Prudhomme, according to Cronkite News.
In a 2020 article on Southern soul food in Paris, Eater.com said although Chauvel-Maga has no American roots himself — his father is French and his mother is from Benin — he made childhood visits to aunts who lived in Macon.
“I wanted to bring back the savors and ambience I experienced when I visited my aunts in Georgia as a child,” Chauvel-Maga said in the interview. “And when we have African Americans who come here, they’re touched to see that there are French people who really value soul food. There’s pride, a heritage there to maintain.”
The food
The memories he brought back to France were about more than just the food. They included the conviviality that accompanied it, an atmosphere that he tries to recreate with Sunday brunch. The menu includes black-eyed peas and greens, according to eater.com.
“We try to stay traditional,” Chauvel-Maga said in the interview. “No mac and cheese with fourme d’ambert, a firmer bleu cheese from the Auvergne region, or anything like that.”
Cronkite News said the chicken and waffles are all made fresh for each customer. It said Gumbo YaYa cuts around 65 to 130 pounds of chicken every day. The pieces are coated in a mixture of flour and cornstarch and fried in boiling vegetable oil until done.
Menu items include YaYa chicken plate, soul food plate, gumbo hot chicken, big homie chicken bowl, filet and waffles, and more.
The vibe
One look at the soul food restaurant’s social media and it’s easy to see why the joint attracts both American and French hip-hop cultures.
Chauvel-Maga has decorated the restaurant with faces and albums of stars from his favorite genre. The shop always plays songs from all ages of rap, whether it is from early 1990s artists such as 2Pac or The Game from the 2000s, according to Cronkite News. The outlet said hip-hop is always in the air when eating at Gumbo YaYa.
It also reported the love for rap isn’t just among fans but also among artists. Many of the restaurant crew members are musicians and perform yearly at the restaurant’s block parties. They’ll do shows during the Fabula Music Festival, a large celebration of music in the city, and the restaurant crew will organize a party where they perform.
The history
Britannica describes soul food as the foods and techniques associated with the African American cuisine of the United States.
The term was first used in print in 1964 during the rise of “Black pride,” when many aspects of Black culture — including soul music — were celebrated for their contribution to the American way of life. The term celebrated the ingenuity and skill of cooks who were able to form a distinctive cuisine despite limited means.
Following their emancipation from slavery in the 1860s, Black cooks expanded on the coarse diet that had been provided them by slave owners but still made do with little, according to the website.
Although there were regional variants, such as the Creole influence from Louisiana, many of the same foods were eaten throughout the South.
