Paul Bocuse obituary

For many people around the world, Paul Bocuse, who has died aged 91, was the incarnation of French gastronomy, a colossus of haute cuisine. He was among the first chefs to understand the value of publicity, and was a tireless promoter of French food and of his own restaurant, L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, near Lyon.

Bocuse travelled the world making guest appearances, pronouncing on matters culinary and gastronomic. He even posed nude for the French magazine Lui to celebrate his 60th birthday. When he was made a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1975, he named what became one of his best known dishes, soupe aux truffes noires VGE, after President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing to mark the occasion. However, Bocuse would not have been able to achieve this degree of public influence if he had not been such a superb chef.

Quentin Crewe wrote of Bocuse in Great Chefs of France (1978): “His approach to his calling is one of intense, romantic feeling, rooted in respect for tradition and simplicity, with a strong patriotic pride – and, curiously, a certain modesty.” This combination of qualities found expression in classic dishes rooted in the quality of local ingredients and the traditions of Lyonnais cooking, but brought to new levels of sophistication and sublety by the techniques of the haute cuisine kitchen.

“I unashamedly wax nostalgic about his … essence-like lobster soup with saffron,” wrote the critic Egon Ronay, “sole fillets in white wine with ethereal noodles, succulent layers of red mullet fused with sauté-type potatoes, saddle of lamb that puts Wales to shame, charcoal-grilled poulet de Bresse chicken carved with dramatic speed. And those desserts? They are laid out around you on three or four tables: gigantic yet weightless floating islands, mousses of assertive flavours, divinely silky sorbets …”

View image in fullscreen

Although Bocuse was associated in the early 1970s with the rise of nouvelle cuisine, he later dissociated himself from that movement, saying it represented “not enough on your plate and too much on your bill”.

Son of Irma (nee Roulier) and Georges Bocuse, he was born in Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or on the banks of the Saône, where the Bocuse family had been restaurateurs since 1765. He began his training in the family profession in Lyon, but the second world war interrupted his progress. At first he was assigned to a Vichy Youth camp, but in 1941 he joined the Resistance, fighting for the Free French army and being wounded by German machine-gun fire.

After the war he married Raymonde Duvert, and went to work for the great Fernand Point at his restaurant, La Pyramide, in Vienne, where Bocuse’s own father had been an apprentice, and where a number of that generation of chefs who changed the nature of French gastronomy learned their craft — Alain Chapel, the Troisgros brothers, Louis Outhier and François Bise among them.

Bocuse fils spent six years at La Pyramide, and thereafter did stints at Lucas Carton and Lapérouse in Paris, and La Mère Brazier near Lyon. In 1956 he returned to Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or and set about turning his father’s small hotel, with its nine rooms and nine tables, into the monument it has since become. He won his first Michelin star in 1961, his second in 1962 and a third in 1965.

This success gave him the platform to spread the gospel of French cooking. This he did to superb effect, recognised by his long presidency of Eurotoques, the organisation of European chefs devoted to preserving the largely French standards by which the profession is guided, and innumerable awards for his contribution to all aspects of his country’s culinary heritage. In 1987 he founded the international chefs’ competition Bocuse d’Or, and his culinary empire expanded to include restaurants in the US (at Walt Disney World in Florida), Switzerland and Japan, and a cookery school.

These diversions meant that he spent more time away from his restaurant than some critics thought proper. This led to acrimonious public debate in 1989, when the equally publicity conscious Henri Gault and Christian Millau, two journalists who had been instrumental in promoting Bocuse in his early days, reduced his rating in their influential Gault&Millau guide on the tacit basis that he was spending too little time in the kitchen. Bocuse’s response was to claim that Millau knew little about food and relied on the Jack Russell he insisted on bringing into restaurants – if the dog wagged its tail, the food was good.

Bocuse survived all the vicissitudes with characteristic aplomb. While there is no doubt that he enjoyed the excitement his celebrity generated, he was not motivated by love of money or power. He was a man of simple tastes, loved for his great generosity, and with a passion for practical jokes. He listed among his interests underwater swimming, but there was little time for leisure in his life. He was dedicated to maintaining the primacy of French cooking, whose cause he served with generosity, vigour and courage.

He is survived by Raymonde and their daughter, Françoise, and by a son, Jérôme, from a relationship with Raymone Carlut.

Paul François Pierre Bocuse, chef, born 11 February 1926; died 20 January 2018