Michelin-starred chef Michel Guérard is dead

The French top chef Michel Guérard is dead. He died in his home on Monday night at the age of 91, as his entourage informed the AFP news agency and other media. He is one of the most famous chefs in France.

The name Guérard is synonymous with nouvelle cuisine. In 1974, Michel Guérard and his wife Christine opened the hotel and restaurant Les Prés d'Eugénie in the spa town of Eugénie-les-Bains. Many of the guests there wanted to actively lose weight and Guérard began to observe how and what they ate. He quickly realised that diet dishes were only optimised for their benefits, with no consideration for the palate of their eaters. Guérard therefore merged his ideas of healthy cuisine with classic French dishes. He wanted to focus his recipes not only on reducing calories, sugar and fat, but also on enjoyment. "Flavour and enjoyment are at the heart of all French cuisine," Guérard explained his approach. "It therefore stands to reason that any attempt to change people's eating habits must not forget that people simply want to enjoy their food."

He constantly refined his methods and recipes by working with researchers, nutrition experts, biologists, sociologists, anthropologists and behavioural therapists. Using the right techniques, Guérard and his team succeeded in reducing the calories in a classic dish by a factor of five. However, the basis of his healthy cuisine remained the traditional recipes, the "nostalgic cuisine". The dishes have names such as "cassoulet", "magret of duck", "soufflé chocolate cake" or "Paris-Brest". As early as 1976, he described his new way of cooking in his book "La Grande Cuisine Minceur" (The Light Great Cuisine) - today it is regarded as the first description of nouvelle cuisine. As early as 1977, Guérard cooked up three Michelin stars for "Les Prés d'Eugénie" and has held them without interruption to this day.

"Michel Guérard stands for an approach to cuisine that is now almost taken for granted, but was revolutionary at the time it was created," explained chef of the century Eckart Witzigmann in 2017, when Guérard received the ECKART named after him.

The Michelin Guide team and its international director, Gwendal Poullennec, extend their sincere condolences to his family, the teams and staff at Les Prés d'Eugénie. "It is with great sadness that we learn of the death of Michel Guérard, the poet of French gastronomy. His innovative approach to cooking and his talent for passing on his expertise have deeply moved several generations of Michelin Guide inspectors. For my part, I honour the memory of the man of peace who tried to unite the voices of our national culinary scene and who, with his dear wife and daughters, built a world-renowned gastronomic destination: the Nearby Eugenie crowned with 3 Michelin stars since 1977. I am sure that the many chefs trained by Michel Guérard will continue to "sing the praises of his cuisine" like the mischievous and inspired bird that he was. ", Gwendal Poullennec is quoted as saying in a press release.

Guérard was born on 27 March 1933 in a small village around 60 kilometres from Paris, the son of a butcher. He began an apprenticeship as a pastry chef in 1950. Only a few years later, at the age of just 25, he was crowned Meilleur Ouvrier de France. After working in Parisian restaurants, Guérard opened his Pot-au-feu restaurant not far from Paris in 1965 before moving to the south-west of the country.