The Perfectionist : Life and Death in Haute Cuisine [BARGAIN PRICE] (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "On the Monday evening of February 24, 2003, a stupefying announcement broke into the 11 P.M. news bulletins throughout French radio and TV: Bernard Loiseau,..." (more)
Key Phrases: third star, dining room staff, restaurant trade, Bernard Loiseau, Paul Bocuse, Claude Verger (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. What could possibly possess a three-star French chef, a master of his difficult trade in a country that reveres cuisine, to commit suicide in 2003, just after wrapping up the daily lunch service? Readers discover the reasons in a book so knowledgeable and breezily entertaining that it's easy to forget, while chuckling or salivating, that it's also something of an elegy to Bernard Loiseau of La Cote d'Or. Chelminski has lived in Paris for more than 30 years as a journalist, covering gastronomy, among other things, and is on schmoozing (and freeloading) terms with almost every chef in France; he first met Loiseau in 1974 when the 23-year-old chef was already winning notice. A high school dropout, Loiseau was an extroverted workaholic, clubby in the kitchen though shy with women, and a bipolar personality, obsessed with winning three stars in the venerable Michelin Red Guide. How he did it is a fascinating, discursive story. Readers learn what life was like for an apprentice (under the Troisgros brothers) in the 1960s in a kitchen that sounds near-medieval, and for a hot young chef in a chic Paris bistro in the '70s. Along the way (with droll footnotes), we're treated to a history of modern French cuisine, a look at how the Michelin family reached its gatekeeping apotheosis, encounters with dozens of chefs and many morsels of gossip. The pièce de résistance is the account of how Loiseau took a former three-star restaurant, demoted to none, back to triumphant stellar glory—and then what happened. Agent, Matthew Guma at Inkwell Management. (May 23) --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

It is just about impossible to imagine that there is an American chef whose death -- natural, accidental or self-inflicted -- would cause anything approximating the grief and consternation that swept through France when, in February 2003, Bernard Loiseau took his own life. At the age of 52 he was proprietor of La Côte d'Or in the provincial Burgundy town of Saulieu, the restaurant he had almost single-handedly propelled into the culinary galaxy: three stars in le Guide Michelin. Immensely successful (albeit burdened by heavy debt), happily married, the father of three children, he seemed to be on top of the world. Why did he do it?

His death pained and troubled so many for the simple reason that, in France, food matters. 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. In France, by contrast, the great chefs (Pierre Troisgros, Alain Ducasse, Paul Bocuse, etc., etc.) are figures of genuine national stature, their ups and downs in the Guide Michelin followed as avidly as this country's Final Four or Super Bowl. Their pictures appear on the covers of national magazines, their opinions are sought on matters culinary and otherwise, their latest creations cause excitement far beyond the world of foodies and food snobs.

That Rudolph Chelminski's very long account of Loiseau's career appears barely two years after his death may seem a trifle hasty, but the two men had known each other for about three decades. Chelminski came to France on assignment when he was starting his journalistic career and when Loiseau was still in his apprenticeship. The two became friendly in the way that chefs and journalists often are in France -- a mixture of backscratching and mutual appreciation -- and over the years Chelminski wrote a good deal about Loiseau, accumulating a lot of background material. So it was possible for him to do a rush job (which for the most part doesn't read like one) on a book that, in France at least, is very much of the moment.

At the hour of his death Loiseau was a "cult figure," a chef "whose name-recognition score among the French general population -- nine out of ten -- was of presidential proportions. . . . one of the gods of the trade, a man in the prime of life at the top of his profession, one of only twenty-five in the country then holding the coveted honor of a three-star rating in the Guide Michelin, the sole and true arbiter of the restaurant business." He "had everything: a talent and drive that seemed inexhaustible; an eager young personnel that was entirely devoted to him and whose easygoing skill and aplomb was the envy of the trade; the (frequently jealous) recognition of his peers and the highest professional awards; the légion d'honneur personally pinned onto his lapel by the president of the republic in a gilt salon of the Elysée Palace in Paris; the respectful attention of journalists, universally intrigued by a personality so forceful and charismatic that he had achieved national stardom on radio and TV."

Loiseau had not exactly come up the hard way -- his origins were scarcely so modest as he liked to portray them -- but he worked very, very hard, and he never stopped. For much of his early career he took no more than a day off every year, and even when he was in what passed for repose, his kitchen and his hotel were foremost in his mind. As a boy he learned under the demanding scrutiny of the Troisgros brothers, and as a young man he became a protégé of Claude Verger, an extraordinarily farsighted and generous restaurateur who sent him to La Côte d'Or in the first place and then permitted him -- once he had gotten two stars and become a married man -- to buy it on favorable terms.

Loiseau was a very good cook, but he rose so fast that he "had large holes in his technical know-how." He "relied on an extraordinarily sure and sensitive palate -- he was an exceptional taster of both food and wines -- but his innovations were mostly refinements of what was already there, taking what others did and going a step or two further: perfecting." His perfectionism, Chelminski believes, is the key to understanding him, not merely because it drove him to be the best in everything he did but because of the perfectionist's Achilles' heel: he "doubted himself."

More than that, Loiseau was bipolar, "the currently accepted term for what medical people used to call the manic-depressive syndrome." During his early career the depressive side of his disorder rarely manifested itself, and not for long when it did; he was cheerful, funny and hard-working around-the-clock. But as he became more successful and as his obsession with winning Michelin's third star grew ever more consuming, his moods became less predictable and his downward swings grew deeper. Chelminski believes that "there are only two real culprits to be blamed for Bernard's death: the 20th century and his own tortured psyche," i.e., "the endless competition of the star system, the myth of material success, the easy accessibility but terrifying transience of fame." No doubt there is some truth to this, but all the pressures of modern life in the fast lane were accessories rather than direct causes. Bipolar disorder, for too many who suffer from it, comes with a built-in trigger that lies deep within.

There can be no question, though, that Loiseau was under incredible pressure, much of it self-inflicted, much of it external. His determination to capture that third star bordered on mania. In the late 1980s and early '90s, Chelminski reports, "Every time I saw him . . . he would press me with the same anguished question: 'Do you think I'm going to get them, the three stars? You do, don't you? Don't you? Huh?' " When, early in 1991, he was informed by telephone that the third star indeed was his, he embraced his second wife -- Dominique, who had brought domestic happiness into his life -- and declared, with tears in his eyes, "This is the greatest day of my life." How she felt about playing second fiddle to Michelin is not recorded.

He must have been an immensely engaging man. He was very shy with women and rarely dated as a young man, but in promoting himself and his restaurant "he was a boffo media hit, and . . . he became a true national celebrity, actively sought out by radio and TV producers when they needed a colorful character to liven up shows and broadcasts." He "was big and strong, but he hated violence and he fled from confrontation." He "was lucky and he was a fast learner." A great many people loved him, and the sense of personal loss caused by his death was both deep and widespread.

Loiseau's story gives Chelminski a chance to explore many aspects of haute cuisine, and he seizes it with brio. His chapter on Loiseau's apprenticeship leads to an interesting discussion of "a tradition that was descended straight from the Middle Ages, the system of compagnonnage through which French artisans of all sorts had been formed since time beyond memory, moving from master to master over the years in a tour de France." His chapter on the Guide Michelin is equally informative, all the more so since the famous tire company that began producing the guide in 1900 as a "promotional stunt" goes to great lengths to keep its inner workings secret. Many of France's most celebrated chefs parade across Chelminski's pages, and he deftly characterizes and distinguishes among them. Considering that their trade is implacably competitive and that much of their time is spent preparing ridiculously elaborate meals for ridiculously rich people, it's remarkable that so many of them seem so decent and generous.

There are times when Chelminski's prose descends into the mannered and cute, especially when he lapses into the food snobbery he so roundly decries, but The Perfectionist is a good book: knowledgeable, revealing and informative. It brings back to life in very believable ways a man who much of the time was, as the cliché goes, larger than life. How much of a loss his suicide was to the larger world can only be guessed at, but to his family and friends it can only have been too large to bear.

Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Gotham Books; 1ST edition (May 19, 2005)
• ISBN-10: 1592401074
• ASIN: B000BNNLNE
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #628,628 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Pressures of Being the Premier Master Chef in France, May 22, 2005

By	Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine (Hardcover)

The cutthroat atmosphere of haute cuisine in France has been depicted by author Rudolph Chelminski with penetrating detail in his incisive study of one sad casualty, master chef Bernard Loiseau, the suicidal result of his own Machiavellian calamity. Just in his early fifties, Loiseau shot himself in the head in early 2003, after he sensed his reputation starting to slide. The esteemed Guide Gault-Millet downgraded his classic Burgundy restaurant La Cote d'Or in 2002, awarding it 17 out of 20, a significant and unprecedented drop of two points from its previous rating, and rumor had it that Michelin was thinking of stripping Loiseau of his third star. While this may seem trivial to the layman, this was tantamount to banishment from France, a cultural and professional distinction that Chelminski acutely explores in the rarified culinary world there.

Loiseau's career is the foundation of Chelminski's exhaustive and often entertaining book, as we follow his ascension from kitchen apprentice to award-winning chef amid the pressures of maintaining those Michelin stars and even more unrealistically, Loiseau's quest for culinary perfection. It was this stress combined with what was diagnosed as bi-polar disorder (unbeknownst to the public) that led to his suicide. Throughout the late 1980's and the 1990's, Loiseau's developed and mastered a style of cooking called "cuisine d'essences", which was a response to the prevailing climate of health consciousness. He was media-savvy and became a fashionable figure for a time. But times changed, and he was unwilling or unable to change with them. A new generation of chefs had emerged in the early 21st century, and novelty combinations replaced what was perceived as the lackluster concoctions of old-timers. Instead, they were striving to emulate the surrealist, laboratory-inspired inventions of the emerging Catalan chef Ferran Adria. As the author makes clear, Loiseau was simply not capable of adapting his approach, but what's worse, he could not come to terms with no longer being top dog.

Chelminski shows Loiseau's determination to reach the top was tinged with palpable desperation. He had to be the best or nothing in his narrowly focused mind, and he became his own worst enemy. Paranoia set in, and his nervous questioning of those around him set off a damaging chain of murmurs that eventually surfaced in the press. The truth deflated him to no end. Chelminski examines the effects of mental illness and seriously questions whether it is a prerequisite for being the top in anyone's chosen field. La Cote d'Or was open 364 days a year, and Loiseau hardly ever missed a service working fifteen-hour days for more than thirty years. Such monomaniacal behavior would appear to reflect a deep-seeded insecurity masked by a supreme ego and buoyed up by an adoring kitchen staff. Loiseau's innate connection with his restaurant was the model of psychological co-dependency, so much so that when he left La Cote d'Or to open a restaurant in Japan, he had a mental breakdown. In the final months of his life, he started to accept that he wasn't the best, and he must have believed death and perhaps an early legacy were his only options.

This entertaining book works on several levels. Chelminski provides a thorough history of 20th century French Cuisine, in particular, describing the rise of the name food critics' importance in the making of young stars in France. The book is also a morality tale about the lure of fame and the downfall of obsession. It's also a probing study on the effects of mental illness on one's increasingly warped perception of reality. In fact, there are so many different subtexts and themes that ultimately we are left with little doubt that a man so adored by the French culinary world would take his own life. Chelminski's book makes a fine reading complement to Ruth Reichl's recent book about being the New York Times food critic, "Garlic and Sapphires", and Anthony Boudrain's more acerbically funny take on the restaurant business, "Kitchen Confidential".

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Flawed Perfectionist, September 6, 2005

By	Ronald Holden "The Cornichon" (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine (Hardcover)

Two recent books about megalomaniacs: genial, larger-than-life luminaries of the food and wine world, Robert Parker, the American wine critic, and Bernard Loiseau, the French chef. They both tell of youthful talent that became increasingly ambitious as it ripened. Parker, the most powerful individual in the wine industry, ultimately claimed virtual infallibility; Loiseau, anointed with three Michelin stars but beset with doubts, ultimately committed suicide.

The Perfectionist is the saga of Bernard Loiseau, big, outwardly gregarious and confident, inwardly shy and insecure, whose traveling salesman father apprentices him, as a teenager, to the chef at his favorite restaurant. As it happens, while young Bernard is flailing away at his first kitchen tasks, the Michelin guide awards the restaurant three stars. Bernard, who's a competent though not exceptional cook, is awestruck: winning those three stars for himself become his life's obsession.

Bernard is fortunate to find a patron who sets him up at a country inn, the famous Côte d'Or in Saulieu, a once-thriving market town in northern Burgundy now bypassed by the autoroute. No matter: Bernard settles in for the long haul. He assembles a talented team for his kitchen and dining room, he courts the Parisian press, he develops a network of local suppliers. He's unlucky in love (his first wife cheats on him with the maitre d'hôtel) but has a knack for the restaurant business (food journalists adore him); he wins back a Michelin star for venerable auberge, then two.

Now, as Bernard puts it, the trouble with success in the restaurant world is, "C'est jamais gagné." The battle's never over. First you strive for ten or twenty years to reach the top. It's not like training for the Olympics, where a single perfect routine wins you the gold medal; you've got to score a ten every day, twice a day. But then, after you've won, you panic even more: now that you've been given those stars, what if they take them away?

And poor Bernard, though happily married to his second wife, was bipolar. Mostly manic: that was the perfectionist his staff knew, the outgoing giant the adored by the media and the public.

(He was ebulliant, too, when I met him in Saulieu in the fall of 1998, eager to discuss his plans for a new bistro in Paris--eventually three--and an unprecendented plan to raise money by being listed on the Paris stock exchange.)

Then third Michelin star came along, and it seemed Bernard could do no wrong. But the tentacles of darkness were stronger than anyone knew.

A slight slip in one of the guidebooks, a rumor that his third Michelin star was in jeopardy, a change in the culinary fashion dictated by Paris critics: it all took its toll on Bernard.

His manic-depressive disorder--easy to diagnose in retrospect--was never treated. The right medications, it's assumed, could have saved him from his private demons. Instead he succumbed.

Rudolph Chelminsky, a keenly observant foreign correspondent, had already written one of the liveliest books about gastronomy, The French At Table, some 20 years ago. This longevity--critical to professional acceptance in France--and his deep understanding of French culinary history gave him unprecedented access to all the actors in this drama, including Bernard himself over a period of many years.

You taste Bernard's recipes, savor his enthusiasm for hospitality on every page. Even as you cringe at his effusiveness, you savor his generosity.

In the end, you mourn his death, but when the latest Michelin guide again awards his restaurant three stars, you recognize that Bernard Loiseau's spirit lives on.

A footnote to compare this book to William Echikson's Burgundy Stars, also about Loiseau. Chelminsky does everything that Echikson fails to do: he shows us how haute cuisine comes about. I read Burgundy Stars with mounting frustration at a writer whose research consisted of showing up and taking notes; I finished The Perfectionist with heady admiration for the author and his subject. That's the difference between blogging and real journalism.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is an important book for any artist/professional, May 15, 2006

By	E. E. McCain - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I picked up this book after learning of the untimely passing of Bernard Loiseau. I previously read "Burgundy Stars" while I was in culinary school and considered that book to be an inspiration. I recommend reading "Burgundy Stars" before tackling this book to get a perspective of Mr. Loiseau during his rise to three stars that is not communicated in "The Perfectionist". The two work in tandem well.

Of course, the suicide of Mr. Loiseau hangs over every passage of this book, so there is a heavy feel to the text from start to finish. With the outcome known, the writer and reader are never able to relax and lightly appreciate the rise of this remarkable man. At every point both the writer and reader are looking for signs of what would lead to the demise of both the man and his image. This is one of my problems with the book. There are few if any light moments to temper the emotion of the death that we all know is on the horizon.

While the tone of the book may be dark, the story is amazing. I feel that anyone who works at high levels or overachieves can take something away from this book. Mr. Loiseau's mental problems are only one component of his personality. "The secret of success is consistency of purpose." No one ever embodied this quote more that Bernard Loiseau. Don't focus on his mental illness, focus on his passion for prefection.

Another problem that I have with the book was that the author integrated himself into the text nicely with personal accounts of his relationship with the great chef, but I wanted more of this. I think that more personal reflections by the author would have endeared me to the story a bit more, but this is just a minor criticism.

Overall, I highly recommend this book. I would give it 4.5 out of 5 if possible. If you are a chef, then this is a must-read. Remember, try to read "Burgundy Stars" first, it will make your experience with "The Perfectionist" complete.