Michel Guérard was the last of the founders of Nouvelle Cuisine, a generation of phenomenons who revolutionized world food from France. But the Prés d'Eugénie chef also created cuisine minceur-a revolutionary concept that landed him on the cover of Time, the first chef ever.
The news
Michel Guérard passed away tonight at the age of 91, due to natural causes inside his home. This was announced by his secretary Florence Pelizzari and Eugénie-Les-Bains mayor Philippe Brethes.
Born March 27, 1933, in Vétheuil, Guérard was an undisputed protagonist of 20th-century cooking, whose revolutions he animated with resounding talent. His roots lie in the kitchen of his mother and grandmother, a great home cooks, who raised him in his first five years of life. “Hopelessly in love with her grandson, she was a divine cook. My mother also excelled. I remember the precision and spontaneity of their gestures, which were pure grace. Theirs was angelic, spiritual cooking. As I often say, you could not feel the sweat. I think I have recovered some of that spirit.”
After reconnecting with his parents, who were running a butcher shop, he was an apprentice pastry chef to Kléber Alix and then chef pâtissier at Crillon and Lido, where within 6 years he met Paul Bocuse and Michel Troisgros. Already awarded France's best ouvrier at age 25, he leaves at 32 to open his own place. There's a ramshackle dive bar, where with no money he even starts making sandwiches, but friends Jean Delaveyne and Paul Bocuse encourage him to pursue his dreams. He renames the place Pot-au-feu and begins to serve unconventional cuisine there, where poetry wins out over Escoffier's dogmas, as spontaneous as a bird's song.
The place gets noticed quickly: the foie gras salad with green beans and asparagus in vinaigrette, the hot turnip foie gras, the tripe with truffles, and the spinach with pears sparse expectations, as do the pot-au-feu (the duck one, though) and the steamed blanquette. The first Michelin star came in 1967, the second in 1971. A year later it is his friend Pierre Troisgros who introduces him to Christine Barthélémy, to whom the young man confides that he cannot lose weight. This is followed by an invitation to Eugénie-les-Bains, where her family, owners of the Biotherm brand, runs a spa where overweight is treated. However, Guérard finds depressing the sight of guests bent over plates of grated carrots with a piece of ham. There must be another way to satisfy the appetites of those Parisian droves, devoted to their figure and health.
From the love between the two, who were soon married, came Les Prés d'Eugénie, a restaurant that for the first time focused on cuisine minceur. Instead of the old fashioned jus and heavy bechamel, short cooking and light sauces, even whipped egg whites instead of cream in Paris-Brest. It's about changing the gestures of cooks, to reduce fat and sugar, while keeping taste as the mainstay, with its immediate corollary, which is pleasure. Because “with a little effort, you can do wonderful and balanced things.” The award in 1977 is the third Michelin star, which still shines on the establishment.
In the meantime, Guérard had also promoted Nouvelle Cuisine, a movement destined to change the fortunes of world dining, along with Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, and the Troisgros brothers, such as trait-d'union the imperatives of creativity, lightening, and dietetics. And colleagues never cease to pay tribute to him. “He is the one who invented fine dining, making disciples everywhere,” said Marc Veyrat. While for Michel Serran, “if cooking received the Nobel Prize, he should be the first.”
