78 The EconomistJanuary27th 2018I
N IMPISH mood, Paul Bocuse would roll
up the sleeve of his whites to reveal, on
his left bicep, a tattoo of a Gallic cock crow-
ing. An American GIhad done it for him
during the war, and itseemed just right for
his subsequent career as France’s most cel-
ebrated chef. This was a man who was
called the pope, even God, by lowlier
meal-makers, and whose death, said Em-
manuel Macron, had chefs everywhere
weeping in their kitchens.
He was the most decorated of them all,
and not simply with Michelin stars, of
which his restaurant, L’Auberge du Pont de
Collonges “Paul Bocuse”, near Lyons, had
held three for over 50 years. (To match his
three stars he had, for almost as long, three
women, fairly harmoniously; his appetites
were large.) With his whites he usually
wore the tricolore collar of a Meilleur Ouv-
rier de France, and occasionally his Légion
d’Honneur on its red ribbon. On that glori-
ous evening in 1975, when his medal had
been pinned on by the president, they had
sat down to his own invention, black-truf-
fle soup VGE, for Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
It was served ever after in his restaurant, in
specially inscribed white bowls.
The cockerel proclaimed his patriotism,
as if it were in any doubt; he was ever the
small boy who loved to run after marching
bands on the 14th of July, shouting andsinging. For what country was better provi-
sioned than France? Her shores were
washed with a seethingbouillabaisse of
fish, her gardens laden with good things;
Charolais cattle grazed the fields, chickens
from Bresse pecked in farmyards. And the
wines! He was France’s most fervent am-
bassador, setting up restaurantsin America
and Japan, and providing food both for
Disney’s French enterprises and for Con-
corde—always taking his own ingredients
with him, to be sure they were the best.Nitrogen, pfuit!
He could crow about French cooking, too.
From Carême to Maître Escoffier to him-
self, there was none better. Cuisine clas-
siquehad become over-fussy, but its funda-
mentals, butter, cream and wine, were so
magical that nothing could replace them.
(A dish of just-made fromage fraiswith
cream was, for him, pure joy.) With a little
simplifying, more emphasis on freshness,
French cuisine would again be unbeatable.
He signed on briefly to nouvelle cuisine, but
in the end it bored him; nothing on the
plate, lotson the bill, was his conclusion.
Instead his menus offered the grand, sub-
stantial dishes of the decades: duck with
foie gras, pike quenelles, fillet ofbeef Rossi-
ni, coq au vin. The only inventions of his
own were the truffle soup and sea bass inpastry. He was no fad-follower, no fiddler.
Molecular cuisine, bof! Nitrogen, pfuit!
Give him some sausage and a glassof good
Mâcon, in the company of friends, any day.
What made him most content, though,
were two apparently smaller things. The
first was the rescue of his family name. The
Bocuses had been chefs since the 18th cen-
tury, always in that little auberge on the
Saône: the house he had been born in,
with the murmur of the river outside.
There he caught fish, and in that kitchen, at
nine, he had first served up veal kidneys
with puréed potatoes. But the restaurant
had been sold, and the name lost, by his
grandfather, and not until 1959 could he get
the building back. He won his first Miche-
lin star when there were still paper cloths
on the tables. Gradually itbecame splen-
did, with crimson shutters and green paint,
a ceremonial courtyard and much brass.
Inside, preserved as a shrine, was his
grandmother’s kitchen, with its battery of
copper pans; and the name “Paul Bocuse”
marched in neon across the roof.
The second source of pride was easier
to overlook. By the 21st century, celebrity
chefs were everywhere, foraging, posing,
fronting restaurants, writing books. Yet
when he began, just afterthe war, chefs
toiled and broiled behind the scenes,
while the owners patrolled the dining
rooms. At La Mère Brazier’s in Lyon, as an
apprentice, he had to feed the pigs and do
the laundry, as well as bring in the coal. Per-
haps his chief accomplishment was to
make chefs emerge, proud of themselves.
They had every reason to be, as artisans
who loved their craft. A good chef like him-
self worked (and worked, and worked!) by
instinct, accepting that a recipe would be
subtlydifferent every time. That final sea-
soning, with the tips of the fingers, was a
beautiful gesture, his signing of the dish.
And once it was done, the chef should
leave the kitchen, greet the diners, present
what he had made. Hence the many por-
traits of him in his restaurant, so that even
when he was away, or no longer cooked
himself, he was there. He positively en-
couraged his cooks to open their own res-
taurants, and was delighted to welcome
650 students each year to his chef’s school
at Écully. Even young women came—
though he preferred women in bed, and
smelling of Chanel rather than cooking fat.
A chef’s sense of his own importance
began, he insisted, with the uniform: the
calotor the tall toque, the immaculate
white jacket and the apron, the clothes of
his trade. That moment when, preparing
fo r h isentrée en scène, he tied his apron rib-
bons round his capacious waist, was the
proudest part ofall. And he might just have
time too to roll up his sleeve, flash a smile
and cry “Cocorico!”, in case anyone
doubted who, and which country, ruled
the culinary world. 7The maker of chefs
Paul Bocuse, popularly acclaimed as the best French chef since Escoffier, died on
January 20th, aged 91ObituaryPaul Bocuse
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