Flavours of Arabia on TV, a culinary journey in Saudi Arabia with chefs Cédric Grolet and Pierre Sang Boyer

“It’s a road movie, a travelogue.” This is how director Antonin Broutard presents Flavours of Arabia, his latest discovery documentary which follows the initiatory journey of chef Pierre Sang Boyer and pastry chef Cédric Grolet in Saudi Arabia in search of “new flavours”.

The cooking duo, well known to fans of the cooking show Top Chef in France, are indeed the stars of this documentary film that offers a nice spotlight on a gastronomy that is little known in the West, that of the Arabian Peninsula. For once, Pierre Sang Boyer takes the lead in this tale of a thousand and one nights, narrating a “ten-day adventure”, as Broutard puts it.

Two friends in Arabia

“Cooking is a constant search, so I’m going back on a journey in search of new flavours.” The project is announced, from the very first seconds of the film, by the finalist of the 2011 edition of Top Chef. In his endeavour, the French-Korean decides to embark his friend Cédric, “the best pastry chef in the world” (according to 50 Best in 2018) and an acclaimed specialist of the “trompe l’oeil” desserts, on a journey to Saudi lands; a first for the budding adventurers.

“Cédric and I have been getting on well for a very long time and we had the opportunity to go on a trip together,” Pierre Sang Boyer told KAWA News. “It was great, a great experience. It allowed us to spend time together.” “It was Pierre who invited me. I didn’t know anything about it,” admits Cédric Grolet. “He came to see me at Opéra (at the Cédric Grolet Opéra café) and asked me if I was interested because we had wanted to go on a trip for a long time.”

Fish, sand oven and Saudi dates

This is how the two friends embarked on their journey to Saudi Arabia. Through Antonin Broutard’s cameras, we follow an expedition that takes us from the streets of Al Balad, the old city of Jeddah, intoxicated by the scents of cardamom and coffee, in search of the “oldest bakery in the neighbourhood”, to the desert of AlUla where Sang and Grolet learn how to bake in a sand oven, via the Red Sea for a game of angling, and the Jeddah fish market to discover the local seafood specialities

The date – the Arabian speciality – is the central object of this gustatory journey, to the great displeasure of Cédric Grolet who admits to “hating” thefruit. The award-winning pastry chef was amazed to discover that AlUla and its palm groves are home to more than 40 varieties of dates, each with a different flavour. The flagship product of Saudi Arabia even reconciled him once and for all with a fruit that he used to find “tasteless”. So much so that once back in France, the pastry chef decided to honour it with a “dedicated dessert”: a trompe l’oeil date combining several of the flavours encountered by the duo in Arabia, notably cardamom and coffee. The book will soon be available in its shops. The film is already available on Discovery UK.