French chef's suicide blamed on food guide

PARIS - One of France's best known chefs, Paul Bocuse, yesterday (Tuesday) accused the prestigious GaultMillau food guide of "killing" another three-star chef, Bernard Loiseau, who committed suicide on Monday.

Monsieur Bocuse, 80, a close friend of the dead man, said the gastronomic guide's decision to deduct two points from Monsieur Loiseau's flag-ship restaurant in its 2003 edition was directly responsible for his death.

"Today we can say that GaultMillau killed (him)", M. Bocuse said.

M. Loiseau, 52, was a well-known television personality in France but less celebrated abroad. He was said to have been depressed by the GaultMillau score and by newspaper stories saying that he had come close to losing one of his three stars in the Michelin guide this year.

He was found dead at his home in Saulieu in northern Burgundy after shooting himself with a hunting rifle.

The veteran chef, M. Bocuse, said that he had spoken to his friend the day before his death and found him a "little depressed". He sent him a photograph of the the two of them together, with the inscription: "Bernard, life is beautiful." M. Loiseau died before the letter arrived.

M. Bocuse went on to scold the food critics who "know everything and can do nothing" and the whole system of giving, and taking away, stars and points out of 20 to leading restaurants. The practice was being abused, he said. Leading chefs would no longer tolerate being "manipulated" in this way.

The head of the GaultMillau guide - together with the Michelin, the leading food guide in France - rejected all responsibility for M. Loiseau's death.

"It's not a bad score or one less star which killed him. This great chef must have had other worries," Patrick Mayenobe said.

M. Loiseau owned a three-star restaurant in Saulieu, the Cote(circ on o) d'Or, renowned for its frogs' legs in puree(acute on first e) of garlic (menus from Euros 130). He also owned three restaurants in Paris. He became the first chef to turn himself into a limited company quoted on the Paris Bourse in 1998 but his share price, and the takings of his restaurants, had been struggling.

A number of other "starred" French restaurants are said to have been plunged into difficulties by the economic downturn. The owner of a string of celebrated Paris restaurants, confided recently that January had been his least succesful month ever.

M. Loiseau's wife, Dominique, blamed his suicide on over-work and a "moment of madness".

"He had become weak to the point of not seeing things in perspective," she said. "It is true that he was upset by recent articles but you know that he was a man of extremes, euphoric but also very anxious." Madame Loiseau,who has three children aged between 12 and 6, said that her husband's restaurants would remain open - except on the day of his funeral on Friday.

Bernard Loiseau made his name by adapting traditional French recipes to the modern taste for less heavy food. He devised ways of replacing cream and butter with water and was a great advocate of individually cooked vegetables, which he selected rigorously. He once said that a good tomato should "piss blood".

Unlike many leading French chefs, he did not come from a cooking or hotel family but began as a trainee in the kitchen of the legendary Troisgros brothers in Roanne at the age of 15. He took over the Cote d'Or in 1972 and assembled the full house of three Michelin stars by 1991. - INDEPENDENT