The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine Review

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(More customer reviews)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".

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