I’m French — and really cheesed off
It began with an outrageous accusation that a world-renowned French chef used an English cheddar in his souffle — and it’s become a dispute that’s tearing the fine dining industry apart.
Most chefs would sell their grandmother to make it into the Michelin guidebut not the flamboyant Marc Veyrat from France who is railing furiously against the famous list which rates the best restaurants.
Instead, Veyrat wants out.
In an insight into the stresses that top chefs endure in their quest for honours and respect, he is demanding that his top restaurant be withdrawn from the guide, after telling reporters that its inspectors claimed he had used English cheddar cheese in his souffle.
Veyrat’s La Maison des Bois restaurant in the French Alps was downgraded to two stars from the maximum three in January and he said the loss had plunged him into a six-month-long depression.
“How dare you take your chefs’ health hostage?” he seethed in a blistering letter to the guide, regarded as the bible of haute cuisine.
Veyrat, 69, took particular umbrage at inspectors “daring to say that I put cheddar in our souffle of (local) Reblochon, Beaufort and Tomme (cheeses).
“They have insulted my region,” the horrified chef declares.
“My employees were furious. We only use the eggs from our own hens, the milk is from our own cows and we have two botanists out every morning collecting herbs.”
Veyrat, who made his name with his so-called “botanical” cooking, using wild herbs gathered around his restaurants in his native Haute Savoie region, denounced the “profound incompetence” of the guide’s famously rigorous inspectors.
“You are impostors,” he fumed, “who only want (to stir up) clashes for your own commercial reasons. We are pulling our restaurant out of theMichelin.”
But the iconic red guide says that it won’t withdraw its listing, despite Veyrat travelling to the French capital to confront its editors face-to-face.
“Michelin guideinspectors visit restaurants across the world anonymously. They pay their bills like every other customer,” says its new director Gwendal Poullennec, who disputes a claim by Veyrat that the inspectors may not have eaten at his table.
The chef, who is instantly recognisable in France for his signature wide-brimmed black Savoyard hat, has also claimed that a new generation at the head of the guide are trying to make their names by attacking the pillars of French cuisine.
Veyrat, who won back the top rating only last year, was forced to give up cooking a decade ago after a serious skiing accident.
Then La Maison des Bois was ravaged by fire four years ago as he tried to make a comeback. But in 2018 he finally landed the coveted third star, the summit of culinary achievement, for the alpine establishment, declaring that he had felt “like an orphan when I wasn’t in the Michelin”.
He had previously won three stars for two other restaurants.
In an interview with Lyon Capitale, Veyrat said the inspectors “know absolutely nothing about cooking! … Let them put on an apron and get in the kitchen! We are waiting. Let them show us what they know how to do ... The Michelin, they’re basically amateurs. They couldn’t cook a decent dish,” he said.
The strain on chefs, who work long hours and are under constant scrutiny, can be telling. Gordon Ramsay likened the loss of a Michelin star to losing a girlfriend.
Several have taken their own lives in recent years. French chef Bernard Loiseau shot himself in 2003 after a newspaper hinted that his restaurant was about to lose its three-star status.
And Benoit Violier ended his life in 2016 only months after his Swiss restaurant was named as the best in the world by the French La Liste ranking.
His death prompted much soul-searching and the launching of a US chatroom for cooks called Chefs With Issues.
One of America’s most famous celebrity chefs, Anthony Bourdain, hanged himself last year on a visit to France. He was found by his friend, French chef Eric Ripert, whose New York restaurant, Le Bernardin, topped the La Liste ranking this year.
The self-taught Veyrat has spent most of his life cooking in his home village of Manigod 1600 metres up the Alps near Annecy.
He has been twice given the maximum 20 out of 20 score by the rival Gault Millau guide.