In a strange city where food is king, a restaurant with Macon ties is on everyone’s lips.

More than 4,000 miles 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.

Opened in 2015, chef Lionel Chauvel-Maga’s restaurant is located in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. Since its opening, the establishment has won awards, gained popularity and attracted several well-known American artists such as Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean and Lil Yachty.

During the 2024 Paris Olympics, Gumbo YaYa Southern Kitchen was featured by Essence Magazine, Cuisine Noir and others as the place to go for Southern comfort food.

The inspiration

Having previously owned a delicatessen restaurant in Paris, Chauvel-Maga used his travels to visit his family in the United States, specifically in Macon, to gain inspiration for his version of Southern comfort food.

From there, he used his knowledge and opened the first comfort food restaurant in Paris, named after the gumbo-like dish popularized by the late chef Paul Prudhomme, according to Cronkite News.

In a 2020 article on Southern soul food in Paris, Eater.com noted that while Chauvel-Maga himself has no American roots—his father is French and his mother is from Benin—he spent his childhood visiting aunts who lived in Macon.

“I wanted to bring back the flavors and atmosphere that I experienced as a child when I visited my aunts in Georgia,” Chauvel-Maga said in the interview. “And when African-Americans come here, they are touched that there are French people who really appreciate soul food. There is pride there, a heritage that needs to be preserved.”

The food

The memories he brought back to France were about more than just the food. They also included the conviviality that came with it, an atmosphere he tries to recreate with Sunday brunch. The menu includes black-eyed peas and leafy greens, according to eater.com.

“We try to stay traditional,” Chauvel-Maga said in the interview. “No macaroni and cheese and Fourme d’Ambert, a firmer blue cheese from Auvergne, or anything like that.”

Cronkite News said the chicken and waffles are made fresh for each customer. Gumbo YaYa cuts up between 60 and 130 pounds of chicken daily. The pieces are coated in a mixture of flour and cornstarch and fried in boiling vegetable oil until cooked through.

Menu items include YaYa Chicken Plate, Soul Food Plate, Gumbo Hot Chicken, Big Homie Chicken Bowl, Filet and Waffles and more.

The mood

One look at the soul food restaurant’s social media is enough to see why the restaurant attracts fans of both American and French hip-hop culture.

Chauvel-Maga has decorated the restaurant with faces and albums of stars from his favorite genre. According to Cronkite News, the restaurant always plays songs from all eras of rap, whether it’s from artists from the early 1990s like 2Pac or The Game from the 2000s. The newspaper said that hip-hop is always in the air when eating at Gumbo YaYa.

It has also been reported that the love for rap is not only among fans but also among artists. Many of the restaurant crew members are musicians and perform at the restaurant’s street festivals every year. They will perform during the Fabula Music Festival, a major music festival in the city, and the restaurant crew will organize a party where they will perform.

The story

Britannica describes soul food as the foods and techniques associated with African-American cuisine in the United States.

The term was first used in print in 1964, when “Black Pride” emerged as many aspects of black culture – including soul music – were celebrated for their contribution to the American way of life. The term honored the ingenuity and skill of chefs who could create distinctive cuisine despite limited resources.

After their liberation from slavery in the 1860s, black cooks expanded the crude fare provided to them by slave owners, but still had to make do with little, the website says.

Although there were regional differences, such as Creole influence from Louisiana, many of the same dishes were eaten throughout the South.