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Restaurant Magazine: Top 20 Chefs of All Time


Marlyn4k

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The October 13th Issue of Restaurant Magazine has a lead article ranking the top 20 chefs of all time. Chef's are marked out of 5 for influence, innovation, success and longevity with a total mark out of 20.

The piece is by Joe Warwick. Regardless of whether you might agree or disagree with the ranking (and those included or excluded) it is extremely well researched, well written and full of interesting comment.

I much prefer this list to the highly publicised World's Top 50 Restaurants - which had some very strange 'celeb focused' inclusions.

The article also mentions as nearly but not quite - Alain Chapel, Michel Guerard, Thomas Keller, Heston Blumenthal, Pierre Gagnaire and a few others. There are some sub-articles like 'one dish wonders' - chefs remembered for one particular dish. Biographies of Peng Zu, Brillat-Savarin and Marcus Apicius and a summary of various authors.

The top 20 are:-

1) Marie-Antoine Careme

2) Auguste Escoffier

3) Alain Ducasse

4) Fernand Point

5) Joel Robouchon

6) Alice Waters

7) Ferran Adria

8) Paul Bocuse

9) Fredy Girardet

10) Marc Veyrat

11) Marco Pierre White

12) Wolgang Puck

13) Michel Roux

14) Alexandre Dumaine

15) Alexis Soyer

16) Adolphe Duglere

17) Andre Pic

18) Charles Ranhofer

19) Jean Banchet

20) Gualtiero Marchesi

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Superb list. But who the fuck's Marco Pierre White?

A restaurant manager in a list of chefs? I don't think so.

Actually, interesting to see Ducasse ahead of Robuchon (which seems reasonable), and Chapel not there at all.

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what silliness. lists like this remind me of why i hate baseball fans. next year, it'll be "best left-handed sous chefs".

:laugh::laugh::laugh:

But don't you see, all chefs crave awards/approval...it's hot wired to the brain.What other job has publications for public consumption on how well you do you job???

OK actors etc, but i mean real jobs :wink:

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incredible that wolfgang puck was even considered amongst "great" chefs - astoundingly absurd he made the list.

-che

Who's Puck?

What's interesting is that at a time when French chefs are being criticised heavily for not innovating enough (lot of debates in the French press recently after the New York Times made Adria the best chef in the World + conference organised by R Blanc in Oxford this year) more than half the chefs listed in this list are from the other side of the Channel! There is still some hope ;-)

F

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No, 8 are dead, the rest still alive although not all are still cooking.

I enjoed reading the article and learnt a bit from it, although I would recommend "The Story of Haute Cuisine" from Anthony Blake and Quentin Crewe's "Great Chefs of France" for a more in depth although still potted history of the subject.

I think its a reasonable stab at an all time top 20, albeit one designed to provoke and entertain as educate. Although I can provide no names, surely there must be some Asian chefs worthy of inclusion, it seems a gaping hole, if only that Japan was such a big influence on Nouvelle cuisine.

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Given that Gualtiero Marchesi scores just 8 points to make the 20th spot, I don't see how you could exclude Jamie Oliver from the list. As one of the richest chefs on the planet, you'd have to give him 5 for success, at least 2 for influence, 1 for innovation (Cheeky Chops charity) and a 1 for longevity (the boy is already well established at a very young age and is no doubt going to be around for some time).

So not only have they excluded Oliver from their list, but where is Swedish Chef from the Muppets and Tako the Octopus? It just doesn't bear close scrutiny.

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Superb list. But who the fuck's Marco Pierre White?

A restaurant manager in a list of chefs? I don't think so.

Actually, interesting to see Ducasse ahead of Robuchon (which seems reasonable), and Chapel not there at all.

white heat ! yes of course there is escoffier, careme, and other great chefs. but i remember reading white heat as an apprentice and getting motivated right after the last page. he is an asshole but he did great things. you can see his breed on tv ;-) ramo!! ramsey and mr. sugercube novelli

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Ducasse ahead of Point? Dunno 'bout that.

But then, lists of this sort are always rather an excercise in futility, aren't they?

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"Not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition...The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.” - psychologist David Dunning

 

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quite right under those eyes, the problem is you are considering jamie oliver a chef. take influence for example - aside from single blokes trying to impress a damsel and the odd mother trying hard to feed her children, i doubt he's influenced anyone of note, let alone any cuisine in particular.

-che

Given that Gualtiero Marchesi scores just 8 points to make the 20th spot, I don't see how you could exclude Jamie Oliver from the list. As one of the richest chefs on the planet, you'd have to give him 5 for success, at least 2 for influence, 1 for innovation (Cheeky Chops charity) and a 1 for longevity (the boy is already well established at a very young age and is no doubt going to be around for some time).

So not only have they excluded Oliver from their list, but where is Swedish Chef from the Muppets and Tako the Octopus? It just doesn't bear close scrutiny.

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Its too early to say if Oliver has influenced anyone of note. Give it 5 years or so and I'd bet that we'll see a string of young chefs who say they got into cooking because of him. Does he do enough hours in the kitchen to still be considered a chef - I've really no idea.

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Its too early to say if Oliver has influenced anyone of note. Give it 5 years or so and I'd bet that we'll see a string of young chefs who say they got into cooking because of him.    Does he do enough hours in the kitchen to still be considered a chef - I've really no idea.

Andy,

that might well be true, however none of these people are likely to be influenced by anything he has actually done; rather maybe what he supposedly stands for.

I can't see anyone saying I was inspired by the alchemy of his lovely jubbly salad.

It is likely only to be his personality and not his professional competence that might inspire future generations. if it is, given him credit, but not credit for serious work in the kitchen.

A meal without wine is... well, erm, what is that like?

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But many of the critics seem to agree that the food at Fifteen is excellent, its just the service and the prices that people complain about. I'm not in a position to say whether or not Olivers style has influenced other chefs or if dishes that originated at Fifteen have started popping up on other menus, but I wouldn't be suprised if either or both of those things was already happening. I'm not saying that's a particularly good or bad thing, just that he is so well known that there's a degree of inevitability about it.

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incredible that wolfgang puck was even considered amongst "great" chefs - astoundingly absurd he made the list.

restaurant magazine is going down the wrong path with these rankings...

-che

Depends what the criteria for the list were. I suspect that the list is really of "important chefs" - not "great chefs". Wolfgang Puck is important because - in my opinion - he was responsible for the "invention" of "New American" cuisine - which in turn spawned a lot of sub-categories (Nuevo Latino, Floribbean, etc.).

Ditto for Alice Waters. Perhaps she wasn't a "great chef" - but she started the whole idea of cooking the freshest of ingredients in relatively simple preparations.

No question I'd say that these 2 people are 2 of the most important chefs in the history of restaurants in the US.

I agree with Andy that it's too bad that most people in the West don't know enough about chefs or restaurants in the East to include them in a list like this. Robyn

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How about "How good their cooking is"?

I'm inclined to agree with Robyn: influence, innovation, and success are criteria all warped by fashion. As for longevity, just because someone's been around forever doesn't make them any good.

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And Thomas Keller. Will no-one stand up and defend him. While he's not classicaly trained, nor has he "paid his dues" in old world classic haunts, his French Laundry is widely regarded as possibly one of the most innovative restaurants in the world. All he merits is an honourable mention?

This list is has overtones of figure skating judging. :blink:

Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?

Lisa: No.

Homer: Ham?

Lisa: No.

Homer: Pork chops?

Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.

Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal. (The Simpsons)

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How about "How good their cooking is"?

Don't be ridiculous, what's that got to do with gross profit margins and rolling out concepts? :biggrin: But how can you judge the cooking of a chef from the early 19th Century? You've only got his recipes and his achievements to go on, so success, influence and innovation must come into it, surely.

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