Macarons for the BBC

L'EST RÉPUBLICAIN THURSDAY 4 JUNE 2015

Médias An English production team filmed for two days for a cooking show

Macaroons for the BBC

The BBC's Love Production team is not being chatty. They are cultivating secrecy about the two days of filming they did in Nancy for a ‘Top Chef’> type cookery show.

Beforehand, she contacted the tourist office to find out what the region's undisputed specialities were. Between macaroons and bergamots, she chose the former, because its story is more interesting to tell, especially as the fact that she was able to pass on the secret of how it was made was an added bonus to make the English viewers salivate.

At the table of the Bon-Roy

For some time, the tourist office had no news. Radio silence. Then a flurry of emails arrived asking for more information. Finally, a team arrived on Tuesday. The tourist office concocted the following programme for them: a welcome by Nicolas Génot at the Maison des Soeurs-Macarons, a meeting at the Stanislas library, photos taken from the balcony of the town hall and the terrace of the Héré arch, plus a stop at the restaurant ‘La table du Bon-Roy- Stanislas’ to talk about rum baba. Excellent publicity for the ducal city, especially as, according to the programme's content, the cookery competition is enhanced by reports on different regions of France. In the case of Nancy, a lot of the shots were taken outdoors, to showcase the city's heritage.

Nancy Tourist Office receives around ten requests from foreign television stations, and last year's schedule was particularly busy because of the Tour de France.

‘We received a team from Australia, Brazil and the Netherlands, who came in the spring to film the Tour de France and report on the stage towns,’ explains Florence Dossmann, head of communications at the tourist office.

Didier HEMARDINQUER