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Luxe, Calme et Volupté
On the Monday evening of February 24, 2003, a stupefying announcement broke into the 11 p.m. news bulletins throughout French radio and TV: Bernard Loiseau, chef and owner of the Côte dOr restaurant in the Burgundy town of Saulieu, had been found dead in his home at age fifty-two, an apparent suicide. Tuesday morning, as more detail filtered out from police and gendarme reports, the earlier suicide speculation was confirmed: death by self-inflicted gunshot to the head. The arm was the victims own shotgunby cruel irony, a recent present from his wife.
France is a country where Latin hyperbole often colors judgments and pronouncements, but this time the population was truly shocked. More than a big story, this was an event of national and even international proportions. For several consecutive days Loiseaus deathno, not Loiseaus death, Loiseaus suicide, that was the part that was so staggeringcontinued to be the lead story in papers and prime-time TV shows from one end of the country to the other, shouldering aside George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, and Donald Rumsfeld. For a nation that virtually defines itself by food, where restaurants are solemnly appraised, ranked, and debated the way football and soccer clubs are in less enlightened societies, where provincial chefs bathe in an esteem equal to that of the philosophers and essayists who strut and fret and solve the problems of the world in the Paris limelight, the news was inconceivable, a contradiction in terms.
This was not just some local notable, a mere politician, ecclesiastic, captain of industry, or other such inglorious personage. This was Bernard Loiseau the chef, arguably the most famous in France (and therefore the world), a man whose name-recognition score among the French general populationnine out of tenwas of presidential proportions. He was a cult figure of worldwide reputation, one of the gods of the trade, a man in the prime of life at the top of his profession, one of only twenty-five in the country then holding the coveted honor of a three-star rating in the Guide Michelin, the sole and true arbiter of the restaurant business. His hotel-restaurant complex at the gateway to the great Burgundy vineyards was more than luxurious. Simply put, it was perfection, or about as close to perfection as our poor human condition allows: thirty-two opulent suites of noble wood paneling, artisan tile, and polished marble, where authentic period furniture stood, cheek by jowl, with all the latest electronic gadgetry, Jacuzzis, and walk-in showers vast enough for a basketball team; a beautiful English garden custom-made for thinking green thoughts in a green shade while contemplating the swarm of infinitesimal bubbles aspiring heavenward in a flûte of champagne; a spa, workout room, and hammam; heated indoor and outdoor pools; an eighteenth-century billiards table; a library; a kiddies playroom; one enormous fireplace in the bar-lounge and two smaller ones in intimate sitting rooms; and a monumental wooden staircase built by the compagnons du devoir, wrapped around a panoramic elevator. And, of course, there was the dining roomor, rather, three of them: two smaller ones for conferences and parties and the main one, a gorgeous hexagon overlooking the garden, where up to one hundred guests sat with a geometric latticework of wooden support beams above their heads and waxed stone pavés beneath their feet.
All of this was served by an ultramodern kitchena chefs glittering stainless steel dream equipped with every imaginable tool, machine, and instrumentand a twenty- five-strong cooking staff dedicated to turning out the signature cuisine des essences that had made the boss of the place a household name wherever in the world gourmets gathered to talk about great meals they had enjoyed or would be enjoying the day after tomorrow.
Bernard Loiseau had everything: a talent and drive that seemed inexhaustible; an eager young personnel that was entirely devoted to him and whose easygoing skill and aplomb was the envy of the trade; the (frequently jealous) recognition of his peers and the highest professional awards; the légion dhonneur personally pinned onto his lapel by the president of the republic in a gilt salon of the Élysée Palace in Paris; the respectful attention of journalists, universally intrigued by a personality so forceful and charismatic that he had achieved national stardom on radio and TV. The icing on the cake was his slim, attractive, and highly intelligent wife, Dominique, and the three bright, healthy young children she had given him. All this and he does away with himself! How could this happen? It was simply incomprehensible.
But of course there was more to it than the simple void of an enigma. Under the surface of Loiseaus brilliant success there lay a vast insecurity nervously cohabiting with a vast ambition. There was the ideal of a venerable tradition to be worthy of, or even surpass: the excellence in hospitality that over the years had made the French provinces synonymous with a warmth of welcome that put the snarling Parisians to shame and reconciled countless millions of visitors with the Gallic nation. There was a madly obsessive perfectionism in chasing that ideal. Obviously there was also human frailty. And there was the curse of Saulieu.
Perhaps the most disconcerting aspect of the tragedy, though, is this: Everything considered, it was not so surprising. Such a thing could have happened before, and it could happen again, because the world of haute gastronomie française in which Bernard Loiseau had been stewing for thirty-five years is a very particular, very peculiar kind of pressure cooker. To grasp a bit of the pleasures and satisfactionsbut also the constraints, vexations, and painof that world, it is helpful to jump back in time. Half a century or so will do.
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