Loiseau - The Perfectionist.

[Carolyn Tillie]

In today's BBC Online:

Michelin guide pulled over gaffe

Michelin has removed one of its renowned gourmet guides from sale after it emerged it carried a top review for a restaurant that had not yet opened.

The Ostend Queen in Belgium had been awarded a "Bib Gourmand" even though it opened several weeks after publication of the Benelux Red Guide 2005.

I'm in the middle of reading a preview copy of "The Perfectionist" about Bernard Loisseau's suicide because of his losing a Michelin star. I continue to be astonished how much power this publication has.

[bourdain]

I just finished mine. A fascinating book. Really well done. It'll be much discussed here when it comes out I'm sure.

[Jake]

I am envious of those of you with preview copies!!

One wonders how a restaurant could be reviewed before opening. Perhaps at a soft opening, or a special accomodation?

[MichaelB]

I just finished mine. A fascinating book.  Really well done. It'll be much discussed here when it comes out I'm sure.

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I think the book is out in the UK with a May something US publication date. I ordered from someone in the UK and should have a Brit-English copy next week.

[Fat Guy]

This is reminiscent of the time the same thing happened to Zagat, when galleys of the 2000 Boston survey were mailed to the Boston Herald and the paper’s restaurant reviewer noticed that one write-up was of a restaurant that had not yet opened.

Though I haven't seen The Perfectionist, does it really claim that Loiseau's suicide was on account of his losing a Michelin star? I thought that claim had been debunked repeatedly, not least because he didn't lose a Michelin star.

[bourdain]

Though I haven't seen The Perfectionist, does it really claim that Loiseau's suicide was on account of his losing a Michelin star? I thought that claim had been debunked repeatedly, not least because he didn't lose a Michelin star.

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It accurately debunks that assertion--and explains--in detail--the many factors (interior and external) leading up to Loiseau's tragic suicide. It's a really good book, written by a guy who knew Loiseau pretty well, knows the world of 3 starred Michelin restaurants, understands the food and what's involved in making and serving it. It's a uniquely knowledgable and incisive look at a much misunderstood subject. Right up there with Ruhlman's best. And waaay better than the stultifyingly boring and repetetive Boulud hummer of a while back. Highly recommended.

[chefzadi]

Loiseau had a tender, fragile soul and ego. He was also a manic perfectionist and tempermental. Like an artist maybe. This is when I really wish I spoke English as well as I do French. This made him a great chef. But the world of Michelin starred chef's is one of intense pressure and scrutiny. He was also a celebrity chef another world of intense scrutiny. He had to endure criticism when he went public with his company to further his culinary empire. He had to answer to demands from investors. It was too much. It would be too much for most of us. I could go more into this, but I don't want to bore anyone with my lack of style in English.

[culinary bear]

The rumours were that Loiseau was going to lose a star; I think anyone and their dog (indeed, eveyone perhaps apart from the man himself) could have seen that it wasn't on the cards.

Gault-Millau had demoted Loiseau from 19/20 t0 17/20 in their guide, which seems, at least, not to have helped his mental state.

As s slight aside - has there been any instance of a 3* going to 2* without any obvious change in personnel or style?

Edited January 29, 2005 by culinary bear (log)

[Bux]

I'm in the middle of reading a preview copy of "The Perfectionist" about Bernard Loisseau's suicide because of his losing a Michelin star. I continue to be astonished how much power this publication has.

Not only was Loiseau not going to lose a star, but the new Michelin guide had already hit the shelves giving Loiseau's restaurant three stars. He knew he had three stars. And Bourdain has said the book debunks that assertion. Rumors die hard.

It appears the thrust of this thread is about The Perfectionist. Let's discuss the recall of the Michelin 2005 Benelux edition in another thread - Michelin - Benelux Guide 2005, another blow to their rep.

[chuck]

Bernard Loiseau's early life and rise to three Michelin stars was chronicled in 'Burgundy Stars' by William Echikson. That was really a great read and it gives a good idea of the pressures of aiming so high.

I just looked on Amazon but didn't see it, although that's where I got it a couple of years ago, I think.

[Andy Lynes]

I've just reviewed this book for a magazine in the UK and I loved it. There is an annoying repetition of some material in its 500 pages, but overall its very well written and a must read for anyone interested in haute cuisine and the Michelin phenomenon

[Peter B Wolf]

I've just reviewed this book for a magazine in the UK and I loved it. There is an annoying repetition of some material in its 500 pages, but overall its very well written and a must read for anyone interested in haute cuisine and the Michelin phenomenon

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Here it is "Reviewed by William Skidelsky" The Perfectionist: life and death in haute cuisine Rudolph Chelminski Michael Joseph, 512pp, £17.99

ISBN 0718147111

http://www.newstatesman.com/Bookshop/300000094085

[MichaelB]

US eGulleteers, please mark your calendars for the May 23 release of The Perfectionist in the US. If you have any interest whatsoever in either

the world of haute cuisine

or

the inner demons that drive some to achieve great things,

you will want to read this book.

I could not put it down. The scary thing is that I saw so many people I know well in the characters.

[The Hersch]

Did anyone see the review of The Perfectionist in this past Sunday's Washington Post? In making the fair-enough but trivial point that big-name chefs occupy a more exalted position within French culture than within the American, Jonathan Yardley delivers himself of the following gem:

Yes, the United States does have its celebrity chefs, but they're mostly in New Orleans (Paul Prudhomme, Emeril Lagasse), and such celebrity as they enjoy is mostly limited to shows on cable television.

Wow.

[TAPrice]

Yes, the United States does have its celebrity chefs, but they're mostly in New Orleans (Paul Prudhomme, Emeril Lagasse), and such celebrity as they enjoy is mostly limited to shows on cable television.

←

Yeah, there are plenty of New York chefs on cable!

It's even funnier because the most celebrated chefs in New Orleans certainly aren't celebrities.

[Lesley C]

A bit late in the game, but another big thumbs up for this book.

My one complaint follows Andy's about the repetition of certain passages. Otherwise, I couldn't put it down. Good stuff.

I'm surprised this thread isn't more active now that the book is released. A must read for everyone who cares about the history of Nouvelle Cuisine, the Michelin circus, and what it takes to make a three-star chef (like all-out obsession and millions of francs).

[docsconz]

I concur with the positive reports about this book. It is certainly fascinating and quite sad. The major emphasis is on Loiseau's disease - bipolar disorder. His highs were quite high and his lows quite low. It seemed as if he was able to sublimate most of this drive into significant work accomplishments. One of the more interesting passages described his foray into Japan. It was at this time that the down side of his personality seemed to really become apparent.

I am sorry that I never got to try his work.

Is the restaurant still going? Has anyone on these boards been since his death?

[Bux]

. . . .

Is the restaurant still going? . . .

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Le Relais Bernard Loiseau in Saulieu is rated at three stars in the current 2005 Guide Michelin.

[Carlovski]

Another thumbs up from me - really enjoyed the book. Far better then I expected it would be (For some reason I half expected a series of 'silly people getting so worked up about food' anecdotes)

Informative guide to the history of the Michelin guide, the restaurant apprentice system, development of nouvelle cuisine (And Loiseau's cuisine) and the tragic events of his suicide. Sounds like it would be all over the place, but was very well put together and written.

[docsconz]

I found the account to be very personal and all the more worthwhile because of it. The only issue with that aspect I had was the author's obvious bias against what he refers to as "cuisine tendance" or the necessity to continuously "astonish" jaded diners. While his appafrent preference for classicaly based French cuisine as exemplified by Loiseau is fine, I do believe that he went overboard in his editorializing against this contemporary style of cuisine. Personally, I do not believe they are mutually exclusive.

[Corinna Dunne]

Yes, he did take a position on the 'cuisine tendance' (is this term in common usage?), but I can forgive him this because it was his angle. But I was surprised that the publisher let the repitition run (practically verbatim in some cases) and did think it could do with a little bit of tightening. However, this is a subtle balance and I really loved the way Chelminski (in his slow, detailed style) brought the reader in and made it feel quite intimate. I was actually at a loss when I finished the book. Over the days that I was reading it, I couldn't stop thinking about Loisseau and his dark torment. It seemed like he had become part of my life for a while, and I knew him. I really felt like I could feel his needy spirit feeding off the interest this book is generating, and it felt strange at the end when I was left with nothing more to read.

His bi-polar condition sounded pretty overwhelming, but it seems that it also contributed to his genius. I particlularly liked the part where Chelminski talks about how the Cote d'Or staff found it nearly intolerable to work with Loisseau when he was on Prozac, behaving like a 'normal chef'! In ways, I can understand why he took his life. Apart from the intense pressure of maintaining 3*, he felt he had painted himself into a culinary cul de sac, and the insecurity about his provenance and not being able to 'make a good bernaise' ate into him more and more. Shakespearean really.

I think the Michelin Guide was wise to leave the restaurant with 3* the year after he died (they had, after all, dropped Chapel's restaurant to 2* following his death), so at least they had the decency to afford his wife the status of La Veuve Point. Mind you, it would have been folly to do otherwise.

[MichaelB]

I really loved the way Chelminski (in his slow, detailed style) brought the reader in and made it feel quite intimate.  I was actually at a loss when I finished the book.  Over the days that I was reading it, I couldn't stop thinking about Loisseau and his dark torment.  It seemed like he had become part of my life for a while, and I knew him.  I really felt like I could feel his needy spirit feeding off the interest this book is generating, and it felt strange at the end when I was left with nothing more to read.

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An excellent description Corinna. I was so upset when I finished the book that I had to get it out of the house. I shipped it off to an out-of-town friend in late February. Maybe it is time to get it back.

[Corinna Dunne]

Yes. I think it is a book that merits a re-visit. You need to look into those dark eyes of his to appreciate the fragility of genius and life.

[gaf]

The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine by Rudolph Chelminski (New York: Gotham Books, 2005).

When an good man takes his own life before his allotted span, we, less good fellows, are puzzled. Simultaneously we are envious at the success and smug at the failure. Did he not realize that It's a Wonderful Life?

The death of the influential Michelin three-star chef Bernard Loiseau raises these emotions. Yet, perhaps these emotions and the explanation provided are the least compelling aspects of Rudolph Chelminski's The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine, an account of Loiseau's rise and collapse. His story is that of bipolar disorder, what used to be described as manic-depression. Of course, not all who live with bipolar disorder take their own lives, but the story is commonplace. Bernard Loiseau, chef at the Burgundian restaurant Cote d'Or, was so fearful of being bypassed by his colleagues and losing his third Michelin star (neither implausible fears, according to Chelminski) that he took a shotgun one quiet February afternoon and ended his life. All rather mundane tabloid news. Same old, same old.

Far more interesting than the psychiatric work-up of Loiseau's problems are Chelminski's accounts of the network of French cuisine (and, not incidently, the role of Michelin and Gault-Millau guides) and the description of the ideologies of cuisine that bubbled and squeaked in the last third of Twentieth Century.

As The Perfectionist emphasizes, the world of French haute cuisine is a tight-knit community and also a field of intellectual engagement. Star-worthy chefs are not merely cooking, but they are partying and talking. In this the world of French cuisine differs from that in most American cities with New York the primary exception. The United States has very accomplished cooks, but the social networks are rather thin and with a few exceptions, such as Chicago's Cuisine Agape of Achatz, Cantu, and Bowles, the goal of chefs is "simply" to cook well.

Chelminski delineates the dense social networks that operate at the highest levels of French dining. Indeed, one of the turning points of Bernard Loiseau's career is the time he spent as an apprentice at Les Frères Troisgros in Roanne. There he met other ambitious young cooks, subsequently his friends and colleagues, and there too he gained the scorn of Jean Troisgros, whose contempt for his apprentice was to shape Loiseau's career. Troisgros aborted the opportunity for Loiseau to train with other renowned chefs, preventing him from acquiring the technical skills of a chef who passed from kitchen to kitchen in a slowly accelerating career arc. Yet despite this black mark, Loiseau persevered and with the good fortune of finding a mentor in Claude Verger, Bernard soon found himself chef at Cote d'Or in Saulieu.

The French culinary world is, as Chelminski pictures it, a small town - and in this it differs little from many other occupations. Cuisine is a borough of the village that Tom Wolfe describes as Cultureburg. The linkages of Loiseau with fellow chefs Paul Bocuse, Michel Bras, Alain Ducasse, Pierre Gagnaire, Michel Guerard, and Guy Savoy shaped who he was and how his reputation was established. At Bernard's funeral, Chelminski reports, he had an honor guard composed of all twenty-four of the country's three-star chefs. This is not merely a tribute to a friend, but a recognition that they constitute a very special club: a fraternity for those who have been hazed behind the ovens and been crowned.

Add to this social world, a penumbra of critics and serious diners. Of institutional significance, Michelin is the Sun, and Gault-Millau the Moon, but critics like François Simon of Le Figaro are stars as well. Add to this the interested and the passionate, let us call them The Steves (to honor M. Plotnicki and M. Shaw): who have done so much, from outside of the kitchen, to create a community of diners. When Bernard Loiseau shot himself, the bullet ricocheted throughout a community.

Networks must be meaningful for participants: the intellectual stuffing constitutes a theoretical Oreo. Chelminski effectively connects his luscious descriptions of dishes to the underlying debates over food preparation. He describes how Loiseau created his "la cuisine des essences" - the belief that the chef could commit to a purity of taste with few ingredients, profound tastes, and commit to a slimmed down classical (French) cuisine. Cuisine off steroids. Chelminski is impressive in describing how cooking is a stage of professional thought. He depicts the linkages between Nouvelle Cuisine, Cuisine Minceur, and Loiseau's own, odd Cuisine à L'Eau. And, given a public always looking for the "next new thing," we learn how Loiseau's Cuisine of Essences became eclipsed by Cuisine Tendance, the Franco-fusion. This description reminds diners forcefully that - at least in the higher reaches of cuisine - real tastes are being fought over. The goal is not only to create dishes that taste "good" in an idiosyncratic fashion, but to create dishes that - like Tom Wolfe's vision of modern art in The Painted Word - are theory on the plate. Perhaps instead of menus, the day will come that we will simply be given a pamphlet and the bill.

All of these themes are worthy topics; yet to reach them one must face down a fair number of writerly oddities. Chelminski, for instance, claims that Loiseau has created a "Maoist" cuisine. Huh? Of all the descriptions that might apply to a three-star chef, being called an Maoist is among the strangest: if this is a Great Leap Forward, let it be so. Other claims (that five of six French families have second homes (p. 12)) seem equally bizarre. At times, Chelminski can let his wit run amok, speculating that when, as an alter boy, Bernard needed a "vial of holy vinegar" to complement his holy oil, prefiguring a career of preparing salad dressings (p. 38), that there is no trade in which "Latin passions" run as high as in the kitchen (p. 60), or in his analogy of the Michelin guide to Chairman's Mao's little red book (p. 51) (Chelminski seems inordinately taken with this corpulent Commie). Add to this, Chelminski's undefended preferences (his pungent distaste for Mark Veyrat and Ferran Adria and other chefs who work outside of classical cuisine) and this book lards its considerable insight with just plain weirdness.

The Perfectionist is a work of an imperfectionist. There are bizarro moments and quirks that a sharp copy editor might have pruned. Still, to be imperfect is not to be worthless. Put aside the Grand Guignol of Bernard Loiseau's lurid death, and we are served a knowledgeable account of the linkages between men and their theories that will add to any diner's experience at the table. Dishy, indeed.

My Webpage: Vealcheeks

[Marco_Polo]

The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine by Rudolph Chelminski (New York: Gotham Books, 2005)

Gary, thanks for this thoughful, well written and argued review. You've made me want to read the book and learn more about Bernard Loiseau. The reverberations of Loiseau's suicide have indeed ricocheted throughout the world haute cuisine - and beyond.

Marc