French chef paved the way for rise of culinary celebrities
‘Pope of French cuisine’ rose from humble beginnings to build a global empire
PARIS— He was modest about his accomplishments in the kitchen but grandiose in his dreams. Paul Bocuse credited his long reign as France’s master chef to everything but himself: good produce fresh from the garden, a superb kitchen staff and happy diners.
But the three-star Michelin rating held since1965 by his restaurant outside the French city of Lyon wasn’t enough. Bocuse parlayed his business and cooking skills into a globespanning empire, along the way transforming chefs from kitchen artists toiling in the shadows into international celebrities.
Bocuse died at 91 on Saturday at Collonges-au-Mont-d’or, the place where he was born and had his restaurant, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement. He had undergone a triple-bypass surgery in 2005 and also suffered from Parkinson’s disease.
“French gastronomy loses a mythical figure,” Macron said. “The chefs cry in their kitchens, at the Elysee (presidential palace) and everywhere in France.”
Interior Minister Gerard Collomb tweeted that “Mister Paul was France. Simplicity and generosity. Excellence and art de vivre.”
“He has been a leader. He took the cook out of the kitchen,” said celebrity French chef Alain Ducasse, speaking at a 2013 gathering to honour Bocuse, one of more than 100 chefs from around the world who travelled to Lyon for the occasion.
“Monsieur Paul” — as he was affectionately known — cultivated a larger-than-life image. The public Bocuse was all white starch, most often portrayed in his tall chef’s hat, or “toque,” arms folded over his crisp apron.
He was a tireless pioneer, the first chef to blend the art of cooking with savvy business tactics — branding his cuisine and his image to create an empire of restaurants around the globe whose offerings range from haute cuisine to fast food.
But the man dubbed by critics as the “pope of French cuisine” never forgot his humble beginnings learning the ropes in his family kitchen along the Saone River in southeast France. He turned that family house into a temple of gastronomy — L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges — and still lived upstairs, sleeping in the same room where he was born, he told The Associated Press in a 2011 interview.
“One must never forget how one reached the top of the pedestal,” he is quoted as saying in a 2005 biography.
The restaurant has held three stars — without interruption — since 1965 in the Michelin guide, the bible of gastronomes. Bocuse greets arriving guests in a tromp l’oeil painting on an outside wall and peers at them from a large portrait inside the cosy but elegant Auberge. Renowned chefs, some of whom he worked with, are portrayed in a giant mural.
Bocuse’s cuisine was simple yet his personality was complex. Three women, his wife Raymonde and two other female companions, accompanied his ascension, playing pivotal roles while remaining mostly behind the scenes.
In 1982, Bocuse opened a restaurant in the France Pavilion in Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center in Orlando, Fla., headed by his son Jerome, also a chef.
But while excelling in the business of cooking, Bocuse never flagged in his devotion to his first love, creating a top-class, quintessentially French meal. He eschewed the fads and experiments that have captivated many other top chefs.
“In cooking, there are those who are rap and those who are concerto,” he told the French newsmagazine L’Express — adding that he tended toward the concerto — a solo artist backed by an orchestra of talented kitchen staff.
In traditional cooking, there is no room for guesswork he said, declaring “one must be immutable, unattackable, monumental.”
Born on Feb. 11, 1926, to a family of cooks that he dates to the 1700s, Bocuse entered his first apprenticeship at 16. He worked at the famed La Mere Brazier in Lyon, then spent eight years with one of his culinary idols, Fernand Point, whose cooking was a precursor to France’s nouvelle cuisine movement with lighter sauc- es and lightly cooked fresh vegetables.
Bocuse’s career in the kitchen traversed the ages. He went from apprenticeships and cooking brigades at a time when stoves were coal-fired and chefs also served as scullery workers to the ultra-modern kitchen of his Auberge.
“There was rigour,” Bocuse told The Associated Press. “(At La Mere Brazier) you had to wake up early and milk the cows, feed the pigs, do the laundry and cook . . . It was a very tough school of hard knocks.”
“Today, the profession has changed enormously. There’s no more coal. You push a button and you have heat,” he said.
Bocuse adapted seamlessly to the changing times, making his mark with a first coveted Michelin star in 1958, a second in 1960 and a third in 1965. In 1989, he was named Cook of the Century by Gault & Millau, a noted guidebook. In 2011, the Culinary Institute of America named him Chef of the Century, opening a restaurant for students in his name.
Despite the accolades, he maintained a special pride in the blue, white and red stripes on his chef’s collar holding a large medal, attesting to his selection in 1961 as a “Meilleur Ouvrier de France,” a soughtafter distinction for chefs and other artisans.
The gastronomic offerings at Bocuse’s L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges are rooted in the French culinary tradition: simple, authentic food that was “identifiable” in its nature.
Emblematic of that is the crock of truffle soup he created in 1975 for then-French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing — a soup that is still served to this day. Another Bocuse classic is fricassee of Bresse chicken — from France’s Bresse region, which is famed for its poultry — served in cream with morilles, a type of spring mushroom.
And his favourite ingredient? Butter.
“(It’s a) magical product,” he said during a visit to the Culinary Institute of America. “Nothing replaces butter.”