Poor ratings may have led to chef’s suicide
March 5, 2003 - The Boston Globe
ARIS - Foodies devour them. The moment the Michelin and Gault- Millau restaurant guides appear each year, everyone leaps to a favorite restaurant to see how it has done. Then, of course, people want to see who’s hot - and, just as eagerly, who’s not.
This year, Bernard Loiseau, one of the best-known chefs in France, was not hot, and many here are speculating that his February 24 suicide was a result of poor ratings.
Since 1991, Loiseau’s Burgundy restaurant, La Cote d’Or, held Michelin red guide’s highest three-star rating, along with consistently high scores in Gault-Millau he had 19 out of 20 last year).
This year, his Gault-Millau score dipped to 17 out of 20 and, according to the French daily, Le Figaro, his Michelin rating was rumored to be on probation.
Chefs often get a sense of where they stand by simply going to Michelin’s Paris offices and asking. “It’s like going to a teacher to find out about a grade,” says Patricia Wells, the American-born restaurant critic for the International Herald Tribune, from her apartment in Paris.
Following Loiseau’s death, Wells wrote in the Herald Tribune, “ask most people at the top . . . what their biggest day-to-day anxiety is, and it is the unfathomable but highly feared thought of losing that standing.”
Along with the very uncommon two-point drop, Gault-Millau’s rating of La Cote d’Or was biting, “If we dare to say what everyone is thinking, Loiseau’s cooking . . . doesn’t really bowl you over, it’s simply done well, agreeable.” The guide calls one dish, “classic and nothing more.”
“The guides have the power to build and destroy,” says Genevieve Brame, whose recent induction into the French Legion of Honor was led by her friend Loiseau. “They instill a sense of mystery and fear into chefs.”
Loiseau had a lot at stake, riding directly or indirectly on his showing in the guides. La Cote d’Or is said to have made the chef little money but provided the reputation to launch his other endeavors. Loiseau formed a corporation, Bernard Loiseau Group, that was listed on the Paris stock exchange (the only chef ever to have done this). He also marketed a line of prepackaged food and ran three Parisian restaurants, along with a top-notch hotel. Despite these ventures, he was still riddled with debt.
So the guides, for Loiseau, held a lot of sway.
Both are designed to sell and create repeat customers. Along with more traditional symbols such as the grapes (these denote an exceptional wine cellar), Gault-Millau generates buzz by highlighting new favorite restaurants and chefs on the rise. This year’s back cover trumpets: “For the first time in the history of the guide, a restaurant with a 20/20 score.” That establishment is Auberge de l’Eridan in Veyrier-du-Lac, and the guide’s endorsement puts the restaurant in an enviable position.
Serious foodies, however, stick to Michelin. “Michelin is the premiere guide,” Wells says. “Gault-Millau is more opinionated, but if you’re a gourmand, Michelin is the one you turn to.”
A restaurant’s rise or fall has huge financial implications. The addition of a Michelin star or a couple of points in Gault-Millau can mean a 30 percent increase in customers and revenue.
The third Michelin star launches a restaurant and its chef into rarified air. This year saw only five newcomers across Europe enter that territory, bringing the total up to a mere 42.
Once a chef has been ordained with three stars, he or she is given the status of artist and placed on a pedestal that demands as much work to stay on as it took to get there. French chef Alain Zick committed suicide in 1966 after losing a Michelin star.
Most chefs who suffer a lower rating - or face the risk of one - fight hard to regain lost status. In Loiseau’s case, when he heard he might be on the outs with the guides, he canceled a winter vacation.
Some chefs simply take themselves out of the running. Former three-star chef Marco Pierre White wrote in a piece last week for the Guardian newspaper: “In the end, I gave back my three stars and gave up cooking. It just struck me one day that I was being judged by people with less knowledge than myself of how to cook.”
Are the guides to blame for Bernard Loiseau’s suicide? Many shocked and grieving chefs cried “yes” in the days after his death. Loiseau’s wife, Dominique, was the first to say “no.” She knew he was depressed and he had a lot of debt - going public didn’t work as he had intended it to.
In the week since, the chef’s death has reminded the food community that patrons don’t go to favorite restaurants because of a rating in a guide, but because they like it there, enjoy the feeling of anticipation before going, the experience while they’re there, and the memories that result.
Chefs, staff, critics, and customers are learning the hard way not to take the guides as the bibles some make them out to be.
Caption: Chef Bernard Loiseau’s restaurant lost two points in the 2003 Gault-Millau guide. / AP FILE PHOTO
