Book Notes: Bon Appétit, Messieurs by Léo Fourneau

[John Talbott]

Bon Appétit, Messieurs, by Léo Fourneau. Paris, Editions Grasset, 2006, 260 pp. 16.90 € .

As most of my readers know, I revel in gossip about French chefs and food critics. And I’ve done a few book notices for the eGullet Society on books written by French critics or about them, including ones by Francois Simon, Gilles Pudlowski, ”Olivier Morteau” and ”Pascal Remy” on the Michelin Red Guide. So this one by Leo Fourneau, aka Thierry Wolton, ex-critic for Elle for 15 years, seemed right up my alley, especially after reading Richard Hesse’s tribute in Paris Update. As usual, this is not a formal book review but my notes; the comments are totally mine, the translation errors as well, and “please don’t kill me, I’m just the messenger.”

The book is divided in seven very unequal parts:

The amuse-bouche.

He starts right out stating that: (1) he’s not a critic, that is, he didn’t see his work as Elle’s Restaurant Critic as his principal occupation, (2)he always pays his checks and (3) he goes anonymously to places.

I. There is no such thing as an honest restaurant critic.

Well, that pretty much sums up the chapter. His first tale (and he either has an incredible memory or kept impeccable notes) relates to going to l’Avenue in the 8th, reserving in a friend’s name and having an off-putting experience. He decided to order a club sandwich and was told that because of a private party, they had a limited menu and they could not give him that. However, they did serve one to Claude Lebey (Joly) and while Fourneau/Wolton paid his bill, Lebey/Joly did not, leaving 100 FF (about $20 in those days) for his entire table’s meal and tip. His second story is apropos of Jean-Paul and Ghislane Arabian’s Ledoyen where Christian Millau (of GaultMillau) but who had long since left the enterprise) who was eating with three others and M. Arabian and crew, who were fawning all over Millau and essentially said – “let the others eat cake.”

Fourneau/Wolton says freebies to critics began with the first great critic, Curnonsky aka Maurice Edmond Sailland, 1872-1956, continued through Gault & Millau and exists to present – recounting that Helene Darroze spotted Fourneau/Wolton and so he can’t trust whether he got the average meal, since readers gave such negative reports. Ducasse insists it doesn’t matter, what the kitchen turns out, it turns out (of course, as he later explains in too much detail, Ducasse is rarely anywhere in his empire). However, the author states, as Simon also insisted that the recognized critic gets the best truffle, the best caviar and largest lobster [book noter’s note: this is shocking, since we Yanks know that they aren’t the tastiest].

When he wrote negatively in his review of La Grande Cascade, the owner called Fourneau/Wolton’s publisher’s owner to complain and presumably to get him fired; it turns out these (restaurants and publications) are all interrelated by ownership or marriage. Anyway, he returned to La Grande Cascade and had a near perfect meal; and although he had reserved under his pen name, his picture was already posted in the kitchen, so after 6 years of reviewing anonymously he was “outed.” He concludes that it’s necessary to be anonymous but not sufficient.

How to become a critic?

Since Fourneau/Wolton came from a foreign affairs background, he states it’s not necessary to know more than good journalism, to have cooked for one’s family and to have had experience eating out. He says it takes no special gifts to be a critic – it’s largely a matter of “repetition and comparison.” He then gives the Christian Millau story again about not being able to differentiate fish types; bolstering it by quoting a study that showed that 90% of wine critics can’t tell the difference between white and red wine if blindfolded. He digresses to quote a story by Paul Bocuse about what makes a good or bad restaurant experience, saying that after a couple spends an hour squabbling during their one-hour drive from Lyon, there’s no way he can give them a meal that will make it up.

He then talks of the PR that restaurants undertake, noting that one group, Costes, undertakes no PR, invites no critics to its openings and presumably comps no critic – and does just fine - thank you.

He notes there are only 150 critics registered by the APCIG (Association Professionnelle des Chroniqueurs et Informateurs de la Gastronomie), their trade group.

He groups critics into three types:

1. Seniors like Claude Lebey/Joly, 80+ years old, a textile industrialist in origin, who came to gastronomy late (1970), who has published every notable chef or critic, who is a fixer (getting Bocuse his Legion d’Honneur and Senderens control of Lucas-Carton, and who never pays for his meals and Philippe Couderc of NouvelObs who on the one hand was the only critic to ever invite Fourneau/Wolton to lunch and on the other is so irascible he terrorizes staffs.

2. The 50 year olds like Jean-Claude Ribault, an architect by training, an intellectual at Le Monde by inclination; Jean-Luc Petitrenaud, the opposite, e.g. a passionate eater; Francois Simon of Figaro who is the knight on the white horse, guarding his anonymity (it’s perhaps fitting that the cover photo of Fourneau/Wolton covering his face with a plate is an homage to M. Simon whose last photo in Departures had a similar plate covering his face for the article “Could This Be the Most Feared Food Critic in the World?”) and paying his additions; Gilles Pudlowski, who at a conference of young chefs Fourneau/Wolton attended talked only of his own accomplishments not of the future of gastronomy and who, when reviewing in the UK, doesn’t remember the word for “room” in English, only “suite” [obviously at this point you’ve figured out that the author settles quite a few scores with this book] and who was presented with a check by Chef Nico at the Grosvenor Hotel, who was settling a score of his own and who beat a hasty retreat.

3. The juniors like the “le Fooding”’s (Food+Feeling e.g. Fun=Fooding) founders, Alexandre Cammas and Emmanuel Rubin and “Olivier Morteau” (the pen name for Luc Dubanchet of Omnivore, Aymeric Mantoux & Emmanuel Rubin) who wrote “Food Business.”

He then tells a story about the Chez Clement group, who agreed to pay for publicity for his book “Les Meilleures Tables de Paris” until they read the copy which was not glowing about their chain’s industrial food. The moral apparently is that in this biz you can’t trust anyone.

II. There’s no such thing as a reliable food guide.

He takes as his first example all the guides’ treatment of Lasserre which is says gets good ratings but where everything is tired and worn-out, e.g. the décor, service and food. He then says his opinions are closer to Simon and Rubin than Couderc or Pudlo. He reveals that his readers are not the type who will spend lots on a meal, thus he began the series of books of restaurants under 200 FF – now 35 Euros. He describes how it is physically impossible to eat at all 400 restaurants evaluated and he admits to sending out letters to ascertain current hours, prices, etc., but he does add 50 new places a year and presumably eats at these.

He then, however, says that Lebey, Pudlo + Champerard are not the persons judging the food in the books they are listed as authors of, but that their staffs do it and one must thus multiply the number of different palates involved. He applauds Lebey for listing the date, price and plates consumed; however, he notes that doing the math, it would take sales of 14,000 to pay for the meals listed (and they only sell 10,000 copies), that some days 10 meals were consumed and some dates listed are for days the restos are closed. He notes that while Pudlo takes the advice of readers and incorporates it apparently without acknowledging such, Zagat, whose method is unpopular with the French, thus making it much less reliable than in the US, at least says that’s what it does. In discussing Lebey’s habit of getting chefs to cook up big meals (free of course) to celebrate their awards, he notes that few chefs refuse to play the game, Nicolas Vagnon of the now closed but well-reviewed Lucullus in the 17th, being the one famous exception. [Note: I should add that Vagnon is now cooking quite successfully on the Ile de Yeu.] He talks about the dependence of the big guides on both local experts and some national ones and there is the implication that these folks are but cogs in big wheels and that blogs may be more reliable. As an example of the incestuousness in the industry he notes that Ducasse (who has a position in Relais & Chateau) quite “generously” put the “Le Fooding” and Omnivore folk up in these hotels and paid for their automobiles (and presumably that’s why Europcar’s locations are mentioned on every page.)

As for the Michelin, Fourneau/Wolton thinks it’s way overrated. As an example, he overheard a conversation at Alice Bardet’s Point Bar, where Michel Trama (Puymerol), who was about to be awarded a third star, and family and companions, disparaged those who already had three stars. On the other hand, Fourneau/Wolton says that Michelin’s inspectors are the best trained, pay their additions and stay in unfancy places; but thinks that ten men are too few for France. He retells the stories about Bocuse getting his third star only after being told in his yearly meeting with the powers that be to get new toilets, Loiseau’s obsession with stars and Senderens giving up his stars. He also thinks Michelin is on terribly shaky ground when evaluating foreign restaurants in France and all restaurants outside France, giving as an example that three of the four 3-star places in NY went to Frenchmen (Cocorico, says he). He is very dismissive of the French ignorance, indeed arrogance, about the quality of product and creativity of chefs in the US, but more on that much later. Finally, he retells the story of the egg on Michelin’s face after they rated a place in the Benelux edition that hadn’t yet opened.

III. The myth of the great chef.

Fourneau/Wolton starts by talking about the “aquarium” in which the great chef stands and supervises his domain; the staff is like an orchestra and each knows his place and role. He says all good chefs are in control whether they exercise it by tyrannical behavior or precise mastering of techniques, etc. He notes that it’s grueling work – 10 hours at a stretch with temperatures approaching 50 degrees (e.g. 120° F.) and that there are, at any one time, 100,000 posts open in France. Kitchens must turn out the same thing every day but there are no play-backs. Like the New York Times article recently, he notes that we don’t eat proteins, glucides, etc. but plates of real food. And then he adds that he had this fantasy of Marc Veyrat like we all do, in his nutty Savoie hat, but he turned out to be charming and surprisingly fragile – but more about that later.

Haute Cuisine

He says that there’s a waltz that goes on between chefs and critics; the higher the pedestal critics place chefs on, the higher up the critics appear. Then he gets into one of his major questions in the book: are the current great chefs just masters of reproduction (e.g. of Escoffier) and is this how the MOF (Meilleurs Ouvriers de France) are selected/elected? The GaultMillau tried and maybe did change all that and then (e.g. circa 1960’s-70’s) the chefs’ personality rather than technique became central. But Fourneau/Wolton repeats the ridiculous excesses of the era; such as serving one 3 petits pois and 2 haricots verts on a huge plate for a pricey price. Then the Gulf War killed haute gastronomy, France was in a recession and rescue came in the form of financing that put chefs more into salaried positions and food became less and less an art and more and more a sort of merchandise. Ducasse, in particular, went off to NYC where his name alone brought in money. But soon after, Gagnaire, the Pourcels, Robuchon and Savoy got on the boat, so to speak.

Fourneau/Wolton categorizes chefs as (1) instinctual (e.g. Jacques Maximim of Vence) or (2) cerebral (Roellinger of Cancale), the latter folks who are more chemists, using good technique and spices and whose shell cannot easily be pierced. He thinks that Jacques Thorel in the Moriban best combines the two. Now he drops his historian’s role and talks about himself (Fourneau/Wolton); saying that he doesn’t go out to eat stuff he can make at home; that he sees two chefs representing polar positions today: he admires both Gagnaire’s constant research and combinations of tastes, textures, etc., and (l’Ambroisie’s) Pacaud stripping things down closer to the product. He appreciates generosity and hates leaving a meal hungry. He attacks Pascal Barbot of l’Astrance, wondering if other critics actually ate the same meal he, Fourneau/Wolton, did. It’s “chiche” food and reminds him of a first class funeral. [book noter's note: Yeah!”] He says ditto for le Pre Catalan with its 140 FF hit (then about $29) for 6 carrots. Such a dish mocks the customer, he says. PS - after he wrote this, he was invited back and refused to go. He says the biggest (“gargantuan”) servings around are at l’Ami Louis, that justifies their inflated prices but he deplores the Americans who fill the place thinking this is Parisian food. He then gets into trickery: saying it’s easier to astonish a guest with turbot than a sardine, with ortolans than turkey, etc., implying that chefs who do the latter choose a harder road and should be applauded. He then gets into money once again, quoting Veyrat, who said his father taught him to always sell something at a higher price than he bought it for but that for him, Fourneau/Wolton, the price-quality ratio is key and he wants to know to whom he’s paying the inflated prices – the staff or the bank.

Ego Games

He notes that chefs and critics are one big (unhappy) family that they never knock one another in public, but under the table it’s another matter. He says that what goes on in reality is closer to “Dallas” than “The Love Boat” and the rivalries play out in a Cold War between the two Masonic lodges of which Ducasse and Robuchon are heads. When the Crillion’s Dominique Bouchet (allied with Robuchon) lost a star, the owner replaced him with a chef (Piege) from Ducasse’s group.

At this point he recounts several tales about the thin skins of the great chefs. He tells a story of writing Veyrat a letter of thanks after two meals and a night’s lodging in which he commented on the poor bread and overcharge for a digestif (both knew that Elle was paying) and Veyrat wrote back that his daughter made the bread and enclosing a check for the digestif. Next story: when he criticized Ducasse’s 59 Poincaré, Ducasse went straight to Fourneau/Wolton’s boss and so then Fourneau/Wolton went to Ducasse’s Plaza where he spent more than his readers possibly could (1000 FF= $200) and was bombarded by Ducasse’s PR machine. He gleefully notes that he has twice been with the great man at awards and never been recognized.

Next he explores Ducasse’s famous statement that no chef has cooked in 20 years and says that the chefs at Ducasse’s three big places are well-known and why aren’t they, rather than Ducasse, credited as the chef. He says that when Lorin Mazel isn’t conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, he doesn’t get credited with the performance. Contrast Ducasse with Fredy Giradet who would place a notice in the Lausanne newspaper when he wasn’t at the piano. “Other times, other mores” he says. He wryly comments that with 30 establishments in 11 countries, the sun never sets on Ducasse’s empire. [in what I think is a nasty swipe] he notes that Ducasse’s book was published by the same firm that published Kim Jong Il’s; suggesting that the house must be into printing books about cult of personality folks. He goes on to give Ducasse a back-handed complement saying he’s a chameleon, adapting to everything, creating nothing: if he opened a restaurant in the Basque country or Tuscany or Paris it would adapt the food perfectly to the terroir but also be the most expensive place around.

The little chefs

A great story: Fourneau/Wolton ate at Chez Michel and after he had paid for the nice meal he went to congratulate Thierry Breton – only to find him all alone in a four square meter space cooking everything. As he has before, F/W attributes all the recent changes in French cuisine to what happened in the aftermath of the (first) Gulf War (e.g. 1991-); saying that those new French chefs turned French cuisine upside-down. He attributes much of the change to Christian Constant, who, while at the Crillion, trained Mssrs Camdeborde, Faucher, Breton and Frechon and influenced Chefs Pasteau, Ajuelos, Detourbe and Paquin and indirectly Jego; all of whom started putting out good chow at ¼ the price.

IV. The ongoing quarrel between the old elephants and the new tigers, e.g. ancients vs. modernists

In 1996, Mssrs Veyrat, Gagnaire, Bras, Roellinger, Troisgros, Passard, Chibois and Lorrain resigned from the club (the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Cuisine Française). But then Ducasse opened Spoon and Robuchon opened l’Atelier de Joel R. – so who’s new and who’s old? Now Fourneau/Wolton retells the history of spices and sauces from the middle ages to present, the arrival of the nouvelle cuisine (displacing tournedos Rossini, etc., with exotic stuff like kiwis), the flight of chefs from servitude to chef-ownership, the publication by G/M of the 10 Commandments, etc., up to the discovery of “world food” in 2000. Then he reminds us that Curnonsky [whom many of us regard as a has-been from a bygone era] as having said something like “Good cooking is when things taste like what they are” - so what goes around comes around. What’s new? Robert Courtine, long time critic for Le Monde is quoted as saying that of the first 150 recipes in Bocuse’s book, 120 came from Guerot’s without the change of a comma. Fourneau/Wolton says his grandmother cooked nouvelle cuisine without knowing it.

Industrialization

For the top guns to finance their starred places, they have developed several strategies:

1. Creating subsidiaries, e.g. off-shoots, vide Blanc, Bocuse, Lacombe, Loiseau, Rostang, Savoy, etc. – the equivalent of prêt a porter clothing lines.

2. Making alliances with financiers, etc, by essentially selling their savoir-faire (again like famous couturiers,) see Ducasse, Legendre, Le Squer, Martin.

3. Turning to “agroalimention”, such as Bocuse, Guerard, Loiseau, Robuchon, Senderens, Troisgros, Martin, Veyrat, that is, using their names and prestige to market products.

This has resulted in the manufacture of sous vide and other products that has resulted in chefs changing from cooks of all the food to assembly-line masters, e.g. opening packets of sauces etc., to place on their dishes. At its extreme, it has resulted in the development of synthetic aromas, that, for instance, are used in the 150 Relais and Chateau establishments.

V. The end of the dominance of French Gastronomy

Fourneau/Wolton recounts the story of the “Best Chef/Restaurant” survey published in the British publication Restaurant where the French chefs were buried in the middle of the 50 top ones; a follow-up poll caused Jacques Chirac to denounce British cuisine which had outranked French places in the surveys. Then he retells the story of Arthur Lubow of the New York Times that said French cuisine hadn’t changed in 20 years. He then says that Escoffier said French cuisine was the best because of its French products, a position the author takes issue with.

A la recherché des bons produits perdus (Looking for products now unavailable)

Fourneau/Wolton says that two things have led to the decline of French cuisine; first, the diminishing quality of products and second, the decline in creativity of French chefs. He notes that Jean-Francois Revel said that a major problem was that the French had created a national cuisine to the detriment of local cuisines that thrived, for example, in Italy and together contributed to an international cuisine.

Regarding lost products, he cites the tomato and apple, where the former is industrialized and the latter available all year. He notes that only 10% of veal is raised traditionally and 2% of pork; that the “noble” fish are being fished out; and that raising cattle properly is doubly expensive. He bemoans the loss of the peasant class in 1960 with the beginning of industrial farming. As an example, he cites the making of Cantal cheese, which used to be made from milk of Salers cattle, feeding in the mountains, but that Holsteins are two times more productive, so their milk is used, but they feed on silage on the flat and thus we’ve lost true Cantal, although it’s still labeled AOC, which turns out only to certify where it comes from, says he, not its artisinal vs. industrial origin. He does applaud the “Food France” movement of which Ducasse and Champerard are god-fathers, a movement like the Italian “Slow Food” effort, that among other things, brings promising young chefs to Paris to cook in Ducasse’s venue utilizing their regional products.

From post to hypermodernism

Fourneau/Wolton says that a huge 2005 survey in the Wall Street Journal showed that respondents thought French food was over-valued and he thinks that’s partly because French chefs are prisoners of the rules.

He then lists the stages in the history of French cuisine:

1. The cuisine of the peasants in the Middle Ages,

2. The cuisine of the aristocrats when the monarchy was ascendant.

3. Modern cuisine that came into being with the Industrial Revolution

4. Post-modern cuisine in the form of nouvelle, fusion and world food.

5. Hypermodernism, championed by Francois Ascher [see publications like “Hypermodernité et éclectisme”] that seeks to liberate the taste from the product.

He compares classic painting to modern cuisine, impressionism to post-modern cuisine and abstract art to hypermodern cooking. Fourneau/Wolton gives Blumenthal, Keller, Cedroni and Aduriz (respectively English, America, Italian and Spanish) as exemplars of this trend, giving as a prime example Adria’s deconstruction of a tortilla into a liquid that can be consumed from a glass or melon “caviar” that bursts forth flavors on eating; saying he “morphs” one thing into another, like cinematographers morphing a man into a woman’s image. He asks why this is not going on the France and says that it is, but in small ways, with Gagnaire and Herve This, Veyrat’s syringing ingredients, Decoret’s (Vichy) oyster and the Generation “C” stars – Thierry Marx and David Zuddas. He notes that they have a tough job in that French cuisine is like a formal garden with straight rows, etc. which are hard to deconstruct.

He now attacks his fellow critics, saying that change only occurs when critics promote change like Gault & Millau did; he bemoans the paucity of critics in France, contrasting it with the existence of 30 food commentators alone on the BBC. He says except for Luc Dubanchet (Omnivore[/i) and Francois Simon (Figaro, nobody’s pushing and chefs don’t want to change.

Instead of dessert – here’s his idea of the ideal restaurant.

After an introduction that talks about eating together versus alone, he gets down to brass tacks, saying that the ideal restaurant is one where they:

1. Provide a short menu, ensuing freshness, seasonality (e.g. nothing frozen) and quality. And please avoid cutesy descriptions – such as osso bucco of monkfish, carpaccio of tomatoes and a tartare of bananas.

2. Don’t have supplements (e.g. added prices for certain products); all that is, is the resto trapping the client.

3. Provide a genuine kids’ menu that tempts the palates of your future customers – rather than steak and fries.

4. Let you reserve at the hour of your choice rather than fixed seatings like the cinema.

5. Let you choose your table, except for regulars who have their places.

6. Have no smoking so you’re not forced to breathe smoke nor seated in the worst (e.g. no smoking) section.

7. Have no background music; the hum of distant conversations, clinking of glasses and pouring of bottles is background music enough.

8. Don’t make you wait ½ hour for your menu or the same time to take your order.

9. Respect the tastes of the clients and gladly substitute say green beans for potatoes without penalizing you timewise or financially.

10. Have no pedantic, boring sommelier and let you choose your wine.

11. Start the festivities quickly without interposing an inconsequential amuse bouche to buy themselves time.

12. Serve good bread: better good bought bread from the local boulangerie than warmed up frozen bread made “in the house.”

13. Have minimalist servers who don’t constantly ask “How was it” and “Did it please you” after every course.

14. Hold some food back for second servings for the hungry, like you do at home [and I might add the restaurants in Zurich do].

15. Let you take your time and enjoy the meal according to your own rhythm.

16. Ban the chef from the dining room; no one ever complains to him/her directly anyway.

He ends by supplying his email, encouraging you to write if you’ve found a place that meets these wishes.

Edited February 13, 2007 by John Talbott (log)

[pirate]

Mr. Talbott, I'm very grateful for your thoughtfulness in posting your summary of the book. I generally agree with the author's comments

[Laidback]

John,

Thanks for the effort you put into this report. I have reveled in the responses to M. Fourneau/Wolton's book, which you can follow in the commentaries on his web-site. I think especially "The Great Pudlowski" stripped himself right down to his pitiable egotism.

In the Post Scriptums section, the labels he places on some of the better known responders is refreshingly straight forward; Lebey, the most underhanded; Rubin the most infantile; Pudlowski, the nerviest...

[John Talbott]

I have reveled in the responses to M. Fourneau/Wolton's book, which you can follow in the commentaries on his web-site.

←

I did omit the website which is here.

[Ptipois]

The comments on Léo Fourneau's blog are amazing. Everybody, um, no, not everybody's there, but Pudlowski and a few others do put on quite a show.