Paper Palate

On February 24, 2003, Bernard Loiseau, chef and owner of La Cote D’or, a three-star restaurant and hotel in Saulieu, France, shot and killed himself, ostensibly over a coming demotion from a 19/20 to a 17/20 rating in the 2003 Gault/Millau Guide, and the fear that he was about to lose his third Michelin star. Although he was not the first chef to commit such an unthinkable act, the shock waves rippled throughout the culinary world. Just how much influence do those stars have? What do today’s chefs have to do to acquire and hold on to them?

In The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine, Rudolph Chelminski attempts to answer that question. Having met Loiseau early on in his career and followed his rise in the French culinary world, Chelminski was perfectly situated to tell Loiseau’s story.

Born to a traveling salesman and the daughter of a butcher, at seventeen Bernard Loiseau became apprenticed with Pierre and Jean Troisgros at Les Freres Troisgros. From there he went to Paris, where he came under the wing of Claude Verger, a robot coupe (predecessor to the food processor) salesman who saw a niche for cooking that was simpler, lighter, and less abundant than the traditional, heavier fare of traditional French cuisine. At Verger’s restaurant La Barriere de Clichy, Loiseau quickly made a name for himself as an innovate interpretor of Verger’s style. Dishes at La Barriere were prepared a la minute and served without the heavy butter and cream sauces of traditional French fare, but rather with just the small amounts of oil used to cook the dishes.

In 1975, Verger bought La Cote D’or, a three-star establishment under Alexandre Dumaine which had lost its stars in the decade since Dumaine’s death. He sent Loiseau there to run it for him and then, after Loiseau had brought it back up to two stars, let him buy it for himself. During this period Loiseau continued to perfect “le style Loiseau,” finally earning his third star in early 1991.

An outgoing, explosive personality, Loiseau was a master at working the press and the critics. He never missed a promotional opportunity and was constantly manipulating possibilities for publicity in his quest to be the best.

In addition to the usual stresses associated with the struggle to maintain perfection, there were other factors at play in Loiseau’s story. According to Chelminski, changing trends in French cuisine was one of them. Throughout the nineties, people were looking for something new and innovative, and any chef who stuck with tradition risked being labeled Ringard–corny, rinky-dink, passé. And because of the meteoric rise to fame that caused him to bypass the usual years of working every station of a restaurant,

. . . he had large holes in his technical knowhow. He was a good inventor because he was an idea man, but for sheer creativity he was not in the league of Chapel or the three magic Gs; Guerard, Girardet, and Gagnaire. To develop his style he had relied on an extraordinarily sure and sensitive palate–he was an exceptional taster of both food and wines–but his innovations were mostly refinements of what was already there, taking what others did and going a step or two further: perfecting.

And in those days of fusion and outside influences, Loiseau was seen as a traditionalist. In addition, in the aftermath of 9/11 and the vendetta that erupted between America and France, American tourism had become virtually nonexistent in France, and foreigners represented nearly half of the hotel’s clientele. And because economies were stumbling throughout Europe there weren’t many European tourists, either.

But there was one factor that overshadows all the others. Bernard Loiseau was bipolar, a condition that carries its own self-destructive potential. When he was high, he was unstoppable, and it’s part of what made him such a savvy media hound. But his lows, while rare, were extremely profound and debilitating.

And therein lies the crux of the problem I had with The Perfectionist. It’s an incredibly well-researched book, with an especially interesting history of the Michelin guide, from its origins in 1900 as a promotional stunt to becoming one of–if not the–most respected and prestigious institutions in the world of travel. Chelminski also provides an in-depth history of haute cuisine in France, and the rise of nouvelle cuisine in the latter half of the twentieth century.

While Chelminski clearly knows his stuff, and knew the players in this drama, it comes across as a dry recitation of facts. He seems to be trying to tell too many stories at once. And while he spends a great deal of time talking about the stress and pressure the chefs are under to maintain their ratings, and tells of chefs who have died young (ostensibly because of the stress and overwork), the only conclusion I was left to draw when all was said and done is that Bernard Loiseau lost his life to an undiagnosed, untreated bipolar disorder. Which is certainly tragic in its own right, but not the message I think the author was trying to convey.

I was particularly disappointed in the descriptions of the different dishes and techniques Chelminski gives. They were presented in a very matter of fact way, with language that seemed more technical than inspired. When I’m reading a book about food, especially haute cuisine, regardless of how tragic the underlying story, I expect to be transported by the food. After all, that’s the main force that drives these chefs to achieve that elusive perfection; that’s what the three stars are all about, for the chefs as well as for us. There’s not a single dish that has come back to haunt me since I read the book.

This was not just some local notable . . . This was Bernard Loiseau the chef, arguably the most famous in France . . . a man whose name recognition score among the French general population–nine out of ten–was of presidential proportions. He was a cult figure of worldwide reputation, one of the gods of the trade, a man in the prime of life at the top of his profession, one of only twenty-five in the country then holding the coveted honor of a three-star rating in the Guide Michelin, the sole and true arbiter of the restaurant business.

The Perfectionist is worth reading as a historical document, but in the end Chelminski fails to engage the reader in the drama of the story he is trying to tell. The people never really come to life under his heavy pen, which is a particular shame considering the electrifying personality of his subject.