publishing house. Which would leave little time, it seems, for the plain business of cooking. Ducasse’s response lies in a quote that has taken on a life of its own. Do we, he asks, expect Yves Saint Laurent to stitch every item of clothing? No, we do not. “The role of the chef is to train people to take care of the clients, who live in the spirit which he develops over the years. The walls of the restaurant sweat his philosophy.’’ And what is his philosophy? In short, success, predicated on attention to detail. “I am obsessed with details,” he often says. “If we make sure of every one of the details, it will not change … like a Swiss clock.” Nor does he mean just in the kitchen; the font for the menus, the butter dishes, the curtain rods; everything passes through Ducasse. It is in all of his kitchens, though, where his touch must be most sure. He follows the career of younger chefs, often for years, before personally seeking them out. They are then inducted into what has been called ‘a culinary boot camp’ in Monaco. Ducasse happily likens it to a sect. “When I tell someone, ‘The venison sauce isn’t robust enough,’ he immediately knows what I mean because he’s been formatted, conditioned in Monaco.” They are not tortured, he says, but they work hard. And if they succeed, they become part of the circle. “He’s closer to me,” one of his executive chefs says, “than my own father.”
THE PRICE IS RIGHT His own mentor was Alain Chapel. He became an apprentice at age 16, despite his parents’ objections. Raised on a farm in the Landes district of southwestern France, where the family grew vegetables and raised geese, ducks and turkeys, they wanted him to continue his schooling. He, on the other hand, was sure of what he wanted to do—the smells of his grandmother’s cooking had seen to that. Six years later he was in Chapel’s kitchen, once memorably described as ‘like one of those beautiful nineteenth-century pumping-engines, moving majestically and silently, seemingly without effort, yet delivering immense power.’
AL AIN DUCASSE
That power was imparted to the food, and Ducasse recalls happily paying three weeks wages for the privilege of experiencing it from the other side. “Magical,” he says. “The excellence of the table, the beauty of the cutlery, le service, le luxe…” Such plaudits, and more, would be his in little less than a decade, becoming at 34 the youngest chef in France to be awarded three Michelin stars, at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. He took the hotel’s restaurant, Louis XV, in 1987, only three years after the accident. He could still not walk unaided. But the stars were destined to come—he had insisted in his contract that if he did not deliver them in four years he could be dismissed. What was to come next was not so much destined as it was truly historical.
UNREASONABLE MEN It was the first time a hotel restaurant had won three stars; both Ducasse and restaurant Louis XV were famous. But in France in the early 1990s there was famous, and then there was Robuchon. Not since the heyday of Bocuse had one man so dominated the culinary landscape. And now he claimed he was going to retire. Ducasse makes it sound perfectly reasonable. “Everybody knew Joël Robuchon was going to retire, but nobody called him.” The Louis XV was closed at midweek, and Robuchon’s Paris restaurant was closed at weekends. “So I said, ‘All right, to keep myself busy … I’ll do it.’” He had already opened a country inn in Provence… where was the problem? History, it has been said, is not made by reasonable men. It is now so commonplace for a Michelinstarred chef to have multiple establishments that we might wonder what is wrong with those who choose not to. Before Ducasse, however, it was almost inconceivable. Yes, Paul Bocuse had half shares in restaurants in Osaka and Tokyo and yes, he travelled often, but he had only one kitchen, and he was criticized frequently for spending so much time away from it.
Previous spread: Chef Alain Ducasse with staff at his Paris restaurant, part of the Hotel Plaza Athénée. Opposite: Ducasse in the kitchen of his Louis XV restaurant within the Hotel de Paris, Monte Carlo, Monaco.
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