MORY SACKO
AT HIS PARIS RESTAURANT, MOSUKE, CHEF MORY SACKO DRAWS ON HIS WEST AFRICAN HERITAGE, FRENCH UPBRINGING AND PASSION FOR JAPAN TO TELL A UNIQUE CULINARY STORY.
‘Fusion’ is a word Mory Sacko has banned from his vocabulary. “We don’t blend gastronomies — it’s more of a dialogue between different cultures,” he says of Mosuke, his first restaurant, which opened its doors in Paris in 2020. French, African and Japanese cuisines are on the menu and each dish is a triptych of ingredients, flavours and textures.
“It’s a cuisine that doesn’t exist anywhere else, because through it I’m telling my own story,” Sacko says. And it’s a story he wears on his sleeve — literally. At work, he dresses in the white jacket traditionally worn by French chefs, but he’s had it customised: it’s adorned with African wax print motifs, and instead of a classic double-breasted design, it wraps around like a Japanese kimono.
Sacko was the first of eight siblings born in France. His Malian father worked in construction, while his mother, who was raised in Senegal, was a cleaner. Sacko grew up in the Paris suburb of Seine-et-Marne, where his parents spoke two languages — Soninke and Bambara — at home, and largely cooked West African food. At the same time, the young Sacko harboured a love of Japanese manga and anime. Bowls of ramen and onigiri were central to programmes like Naruto, Pokémon and One Piece, and he couldn’t help but wonder whether the cartoon dishes on screen could be as good in real life as they seemed.
When he was in his mid-teens, Sacko enrolled in a specialist hospitality and catering secondary school before going on to work in kitchens professionally. It was working with chef Hans Zahner at the Michelin-starred Le Royal Monceau -Raffles Paris, and being challenged to create a new dish, that really sparked a fire within him. “I started thinking gastronomy and going to sleep imagining dishes,” Sacko says.
Inspired by his childhood passion for Japan, Sacko began experimenting with ingredients such as miso, yuzu and togarashi (a spice blend), which complemented his training in classic French cuisine. He also tapped into his African heritage through several — failed — attempts at recreating his mother’s mafé (peanut stew). “I told myself, ‘Instead of chasing that specific flavour, make your own recipe’,” he recalls. So, Sacko decided to use miso paste as seasoning, resulting in a reinvented dish that retained the comfort-food quality of mafé, but with added umami complexity.
Wanting to devote more time to experimenting and developing
