Alain Senderens
Chef described as ‘the Picasso of French cooking’ who tried to reject his Michelin star rating
ALAIN SENDERENS, the French chef, who has died aged 77, held three Michelin stars for 23 years until 2005, when he tossed them away and closed his Paris restaurant, Lucas Carton in the Place de la Madeleine; in its place he opened Senderens, a cheaper and more cheerful establishment – but he could not escape the Michelin men.
In the 1970s, with Michel Guérard and Paul Bocuse, Alain Senderens was one of the pioneers of “nouvelle cuisine”, the approach to gastronomy that ditched the heavily sauced tradition of Escoffier and emphasised fresh ingredients, incorporated oriental influences and prized lightness.
First at L’archestrate, in the rue de Varenne, a restaurant which he founded in 1968, then from 1985 at Lucas Carton, Senderens offered such dishes as cooked oysters and leeks with foie gras served with cabbage or apple, sweet-and-sour combinations such as lobster with vanilla, and honey-roasted spiced duck Apiciu. Henri Gault and Christian Millau, the French restaurant critics, declared him to be “the Picasso of French cooking”. Another critic said he did not know whether Senderens was a madman or a genius.
At Lucas Carton, a gourmet establishment in an art nouveau setting that had changed little since its foundation in 1910, he built his menu around the wine, with dishes served as an automatic accompaniment to the eye-wateringly expensive grands crus on the wine list. “A wine gives me ideas,” he once wrote. “It gives a framework to my work, in the search for chords, that is to say in texture, volume and density. When I am mistaken, the wine becomes flat, the food sounds false.”
With bills of $400 or so per head ($500 in the truffle season), dinner at Lucas Carton could be a financially challenging experience. It could also be an intimidating one. “The food can be stunning, service often querulous and pretentious, and prices exorbitant,” warned Patricia Wells in her Food Lovers’ Guide to Paris. “But it’s good to go just to see what chef Alain Senderens is up to – if he’s there and not jetting around the world promoting his own name.”
“Lucas Carton is not a place for the faint of wallet”, observed Marc Carnegie in the Spectator, “which is another way of saying it is full of Americans. Yanks in Paris take an odd satisfaction in being sniffed at.”
If English-speaking diners did not quail at the cultural torture of having to communicate in French with the immaculate, tail-coated waiters (two per customer – “one to carry the plate, the other to lift the cloche”), those who thought they knew their wines risked being demolished by the chef de cuisine.
“You should never, never serve a red wine with cheese,’’ he proclaimed. “Chemically speaking, a red wine does absolute battle with the composition of a well-made cheese … You know, of course, that the ultimate wine for Roquefort is a Sauternes.’’
There was therefore some surprise in 2005 when Senderens announced that he was tired of having to charge “indecent” prices to deliver Michelinstarred perfection (the cost of flowers, napery and other details that did not include the ingredients cost the business a whopping $485,000 a year). He had, moreover, tired of the formal dress code he had imposed and of the stiffness that came with the large staff hovering over every table: “We don’t have the right any more to throw out clients who arrive in sneakers without a coat and tie. Sometimes in the evenings here there are clients who are so self-conscious they don’t even dare to talk to each other. Dining has become too intellectual.’’
He was also fed up with the “fussy, over-complicated food” he had to produce to satisfy the Michelin inspectors. “I don’t want to feed my ego any more,” he told an interviewer. “I am too old for that. I can do beautiful cuisine without all the tra-la-la and chichi, and put the money into what’s on the plate.’’
When it reopened as Senderens in September 2006, prices had been slashed by at least half, staff numbers had been cut from 120 to 64 and signature dishes such as blue Brittany lobster beside a creamy basil-infused polenta with zucchini flowers perfumed with oil of lemon and basil had been replaced with cheaper but equally delicious offerings such as coquilles St Jacques with courgette flowers in a ginger-perfumed bouillon; fillet of sole with cucumber and celery leaves in tempura, and roast lamb with curry, mango and lemon grass. “If you cook turbot,” he explained, “it’ll end up costing $120 a portion. So why cook turbot? Why serve lobster and caviar, all these expensive things? With a good recipe, I prefer to cook sardines.”
Within a few months Senderens had one of the longest (and possibly youngest) waiting lists in Paris.
Senderens did not want any Michelin stars for his new restaurant, but after all the fuss about handing back his three stars, he had been contacted by Jean-luc Naret, the director of the guide, and informed that the award could not be rejected or handed back. Within a few months of opening, Senderens had acquired two stars, having risen up the Michelin hierarchy faster than any restaurant in the guide’s history.
“I wanted to make another style of restaurant,” Senderens said, ruefully. “I didn’t want the stars any more, but I can’t do anything. Michelin says they give stars to whomever they want.”
“If his sardine is the best,” said Naret, “he will get three stars, whether he wants them or not.’’
The son of a barber, Alain Senderens was born on December 2 1939 at Hyères, a small town in the Var department of Provence, to parents who “thought that the principal things in life were eating well and reading”. He began his career as an apprentice chef in the Ambassador Hotel in the pilgrimage town of Lourdes, then moved to Paris as commis gardemanger at La Tour d’argent, later moving up to chef rotisseur. Before opening L’archestrate he worked as chef saucier at Lucas Carton and Berkeley, chef poissonnier at Berkeley and sous chef at Hilton Orly.
In 1978 he won three Michelin stars. Senderens published several cookery books and was the author of Proust – La cuisine retrouvée (“Proust, cuisine regained”), published in 1991, a gourmet’s view of the literary masterpiece.
Senderens is survived by his wife, Eventhia.
Alain Senderens, born December 2 1939, died June 26 2017