Paul Bocuse
Michelin-starred French chef regarded by his admirers as the greatest cuisinier since Escoffier
PAUL BOCUSE, who has died aged 91, was the bestknown name in French cuisine since Escoffier and a man who did more than anyone else to turn the three-star Michelin chef into a celebrity. From his home town of Collongesau-mont-d’or, near Lyon, Bocuse developed a huge gastronomic industry, of which his own restaurant at the L’auberge du Pont de Collonges “Paul Bocuse”, which boasted an unbroken run of more than 50 years of three Michelin stars, was the pinnacle.
His commercial interests ranged from a restaurant in Florida to a cooking school in Japan, to a line of canned foods and delicatessen products. In addition he operated a chain of brasseries under licence and trained a generation of top European chefs.
While his rivals were still slaving away in hot kitchens, Bocuse was always busy courting the media. He named a famous truffle soup after the former French President, Valéry Giscard d’estaing, and flew round the world with 500 kilos of ingredients to demonstrate his art in America, Japan and elsewhere.
It was Bocuse who thought up the much-imitated wheeze of taking food writers to the local market, where they would never fail to marvel at the sight of the legendary chef inspecting choice produce before taking it back to the restaurant to transform it into culinary magic – a simple publicity stunt which served to endorse the myth that “real chefs” buy their food in person each morning. In fact, Bocuse never bought his own ingredients and seldom prepared them himself. When a journalist asked him who did the cooking when he was away, he replied icily: “The same people who do it when I am here.”
Bocuse was prominently associated with the development of Nouvelle Cuisine, a less calorific alternative to traditional French haute cuisine, which stresses presentation and the importance of fresh ingredients of the highest quality. The term was first used in a newspaper article in 1972 and proved a brilliant publicity vehicle.
But Bocuse’s attachment to the new style did not outlive media interest and he later dismissed Nouvelle Cuisine as “not enough on your plate and too much on your bill”. He returned to the more substantial tradition of French regional cuisine, in which genre he became celebrated for such delights as black truffle soup and Bresse chicken cooked in a pig’s bladder.
Paul Bocuse was born on February 11 1926 in Collonges-au-mont-d’or where his family had been chefs since 1765 when an ancestor, Michel Bocuse, opened a little auberge in an abandoned flour mill. In 1921 Paul’s grandfather Joseph sold the family restaurant and with it the family name. Four years later Paul’s father Georges married Irma Roulier whose parents were also restaurateurs in the town. Georges took over their restaurant but could not give it his own name. As a child, Paul became determined to rectify the situation.
During the early years of the war, Bocuse worked as an apprentice at Claude Maret’s Restaurant de la Soierie in Lyon, but in 1944, after the Allied invasion, he enlisted in the Free French Army. Shot and badly wounded in Alsace, he recovered to take part in the victory march in Paris in 1945. After the war he continued his apprenticeship at La Mère Brasier at Zizza-lalu, the daughter of one of his long-term concubines, Patricia Zizza.
By his own admission, Bocuse’s career as a serial adulterer began in earnest in the 1960s when “everyone was sleeping with each other”, though he claimed to have been sexually active from the age of 13. On one occasion he recalled an encounter with an American journalist who had interviewed him for her magazine: “I told her: ‘The day you put me on your cover I’ll take you beneath my covers.’ A few weeks later, I made the front and, true enough, kept my promise.”
Of his longer term relationships, in 2005 he admitted in an interview with The Daily Telegraph that “it would not be everyone’s idea of married life, but everyone gets on”, reckoning that, if he were to add up all the time they had been together as couples, “it comes to 145 years”.
He admitted, aged 79, that advancing years and a triple heart bypass had slowed him down, although he insisted that the question was not how often a month he could make love, but how many times a day. “Food and sex have much in common,” he observed. “We consummate a union; we devour each other’s eyes; we hunger for one other.”
Though most French people greeted the revelations with a Gallic shrug, they demonstrated that Bocuse had lost none of his talent for captivating the country’s media. He was generally considered to have overreached himself in 2003, however when, following the suicide of the three-star chef Bernard Loiseau, he reportedly tried to negotiate a deal for the magazine Paris Match to photograph the top chefs attending Loiseau’s funeral in Saulieu, Burgundy. Bocuse had controversially blamed the Gaultmillau food guide, which had docked two points off its rating of Loiseau’s restaurant, for his death.
Bocuse was the only chef to have been awarded the Legion d’honneur by a French president at a ceremony in which Valéry Giscard d’estaing had the famous truffle soup named after him in return. From 1987 the Bocuse d’or became regarded as the most prestigious award for chefs in the world (at least where French food is concerned).
In 2011 Bocuse was named Chef of the Century by the Culinary Institute of America and the following year the institute announced that they were changing the name of their Escoffier Restaurant to the Bocuse Restaurant.
Bocuse is survived by his wife, Raymonde, and by their daughter, and by a son by his long-term mistress Raymone Carlut.
Paul Bocuse, born February 11 1926, died January 20 2018 two Davies brothers, which sometimes ended in fistfights.
Their fractious relationship had a demoralising effect on other band members, leading the original bassist Peter Quaife to quit in 1969. He was replaced by John Dalton, who lasted until November 1976. The former Blodwyn Pig bassist Andy Pyle stepped into the breach briefly before Rodford took over.
By this time Ray Davies had overcome his drinking problem and the two brothers seemed to be getting on better. With Rodford and the keyboard player Ian Gibbons added to the line-up, the Kinks enjoyed a return to commercial success, Ray Davies noting that the new recruits had “made us a much better band, a new band, really”.
But relations within the band continued to cause tensions and in 1984 Mick Avory left “to design golf clubs” after falling out with Dave Davies, to be replaced by Robert Henrit.
Rodford played on the albums Low Budget (1979), Give the People What They Want (1981), State of album, Odessey and Oracle, went on to become a cult favourite, voted in the top 100 of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.
Following their break-up, Rodford joined Rod Argent’s eponymous new prog-rock band, Argent. When Argent left in 1976 to record on his own, the remaining three members (Rodford, Bob Henrit and John Verity) formed the short-lived band Phoenix, before Rodford joined the Kinks.
In 1999 when Argent resurrected the Zombies, Rodford – along with his son Steve on drums – joined the re-formed group, with whom he spent the next 18 years recording and touring until his last performance six days ago at the 30A Songwriters Festival at Miramar Beach, Florida.
In 2009 he briefly joined the line-up of the Kast Off Kinks, a band formed by former band members in the 1990s to keep their music alive.
Rodford, who died following a fall, is survived by his wife Jean and by their two sons, Steve and Russell, a guitarist.
Jim Rodford, born July 7 1941, died January 20 2018