Robuchon, Joël

• Born: April 7, 1945
• Birthplace: Poitiers, France
• Died: August 6, 2018
• Place of death: Geneva, Switzerland

Chef, restaurateur, author, television chef

Widely considered during his career to be the best chef in France—if not the entire world—Joël Robuchon made his name through a painstaking attention to detail that elevated even simple dishes such as salads and mashed potatoes to remarkable heights. "The way [Robuchon] trimmed the edges of the oysters with scissors or how precisely he cut the red peppers represents an extra zone of perfection that few people are obsessed with," David Bouley, a chef and former employee of Robuchon's, explained to Florence Fabricant for the New York Times (November 6, 1991). "I watched the way he takes notes on so many things and the keenness of his perception. He's like a Swiss watchmaker." Over the course of his career, the "famously over-achieving" Robuchon established and run numerous world-famous restaurants, published an autobiography and several cookbooks, and hosted a popular cooking show on French television.

Robuchon told Megan Willett for AP (as published in Business Insider, March 28, 2014), "I never try to marry more than three flavors in one dish. I like walking into a kitchen and knowing that the dishes are identifiable and the ingredients within them are easy to detect. My role as a chef is respecting the produce. Why should I change and mask the original flavors of the produce that I'm utilizing?"

Robuchon operated traditional restaurants as well as smaller "ateliers" in places including Hong Kong, Las Vegas, London, Macau, Monaco, Paris, Singapore, Taipei, and Tokyo. His various establishments earned him over thirty Michelin stars, the most garnered by any chef in the world. Robuchon regularly visited all of his restaurants, which each had their own distinguished chefs. "I have a good team and you must keep questioning yourself and learn from past experience. Opening a restaurant is like raising a child, you must be involved," he told Rebecca Lynne Tan of the Singapore Straits-Times (March 31, 2011).

Education and Early Career

Joël Robuchon was born April 7, 1945, in Poitiers, France. His father was a stonemason, his mother a housewife. At age twelve Robuchon entered seminary school to become a priest. There, he often helped the nuns prepare meals, an experience that left a lasting impression. When his parents divorced in 1960, he was obliged to leave the seminary to support his mother. At fifteen he got a job as an apprentice cook at Relais de Poitiers, a local hotel restaurant. He spent much of his time there cleaning, mopping, and scrubbing, but he also learned the foundations of classical French cooking and performed all the other minor duties of a large kitchen. The time spent cleaning was not lost on the apprentice chef. "Once you've washed pots and polished copper for someone else, you'll never treat pots the same, even once someone else is cleaning them for you," he told Patricia Wells in their joint cookbook Simply French.

In 1963 Robuchon left Relais de Poitiers to become a Compagnon of the Tour de France, a program that sends aspiring chefs around the country to learn their trade working in various restaurants. Altogether he spent ten years as a compagnon, or journeyman, working in restaurants in Paris and across the French provinces, as well as competing in cooking contests, in which he garnered numerous bronze, silver, and gold medals. "As a compagnon," Robuchon told Wells, "I learned that no matter how well we think we do something, we can still do it better. And that there is no greater personal satisfaction than in giving the very best of yourself each day." In 1974 Robuchon was appointed head chef of a restaurant in the Hotel Concorde-Lafayette, in Paris, managing ninety other chefs who cooked for an average of 3,000 customers per meal. His care and precision proved well-suited to the monumental task. In 1976 Robuchon won the Meilleur Ouvrier de France, the country's highest culinary honor, in a national competition. Two years later, he took over the kitchen of the restaurant at the Paris Hôtel Nikko.

In December 1981 Robuchon opened his own restaurant, Jamin, located on Paris's Rue de Longchamp. Although the restaurant accommodated a maximum of forty guests, he hired forty employees, including fifteen chefs—a ratio of one staff person per customer. A "maniac for neatness and cleanliness," as Patricia Wells characterized him, Robuchon ordered the kitchen cleaned from top to bottom twice a day. Jamin quickly earned a reputation for excellent, unobtrusive service and for food that approached perfection. In particular Robuchon's buttery potatoes and flawless salads made him a cooking celebrity. Before long the restaurant had become a Paris institution, with reservations often required months in advance. After only three years of operation, Jamin earned a three-star rating from Michelin, the famously selective restaurant guide—the fastest rise in Michelin history. (Few establishments earn even a single Michelin star, and only two or three dozen in the world earn three stars in any given year. Upon learning of Jamin's superlative rating, Robuchon remarked to Wells that the accolade "does not mean I merit three stars. . . . it only means that now I have the right to merit them.") Robuchon's cooking later earned a 19.5 rating (out of 20) in the German Gault-Millau guide, and he went on to win the Pierre Taittinger Prize, a prestigious culinary award. Gault-Millau also named Robuchon "chef of the century" in 1990.

Speaking with Wells, Robuchon explained his culinary philosophy: "You have an obligation to respect the flavor, the essence, the authenticity of ingredients. You don't have the right to alter them. . . . When you cook a mushroom, you don't have the right to make it taste like anything other than a mushroom." At times this approach stands in contrast to the traditional methods of French cooking, in which the natural flavors of ingredients are sometimes masked and altered by herbs, spices, cream, and sauce. While Robuchon did make use of spices and sauces, he did so only to enhance the ingredients' inherent flavors. "In order to feed yourself, you are always killing something else, whether it's a vegetable, fish, lamb or lobster," he explained through a translator, as quoted by Scott Warner. "Once you understand that, you are obliged to respect the nature of that ingredient—and you cook with much more love."

In 1991 Wells published Simply French, an English-language presentation of Robuchon's cuisine. Simply French drew excited praise from American food critics. "Despite—or perhaps because of—its complexity and rigorous nature, ‘Simply French’ is an exciting cookbook," Jocelyn McClurg wrote for the Hartford Courant (December 25, 1991). "There is a sense of newness, of freshness and adventure about Robuchon's cuisine." Robuchon later expanded upon his culinary ideas in Joël Robuchon: Cooking through the Seasons (1995), La Cuisine de Joël Robuchon: A Seasonal Cookbook (2001), and The Complete Robuchon (2008).

In 1993 Robuchon closed Jamin in order to open Restaurant Joël Robuchon, a larger, more formal establishment which soon surpassed Jamin in popularity. "It's the best presented, most expertly prepared and well-thought-out repast I've experienced," Jerry Shriver wrote for USA Today (April 14, 1995), "a testament to artistry, and almost worth the money." (Shriver noted that he had paid $391.27 for a six-course lunch, after waiting six months for a table.) In 1994, together with Taillevent, a French restaurant, Robuchon opened Château Taillevent-Robuchon in Tokyo, which soon earned a reputation as one of the finest eateries in Japan.

Later Career

After more than fifteen years the stress of being a chef-proprietor became too much for Robuchon, who in 1996 announced his retirement. "I didn't want to have a heart attack," he told Scott Warner. But Robuchon remained busy in the culinary world. Even after closing his second restaurant, he served as a consultant for fine restaurants internationally. His first venture as a restaurateur after closing Restaurant Joël Robuchon was the Robuchon à Galera (later renamed Robuchon au Dôme), at the Grand Lisboa Hotel in Macao, which he opened in 2001. Robuchon also appeared on a daily ten-minute cooking show, Cuisiner Comme un Grand Chef ("Cook Like a Great Chef"); wrote his autobiography, Le Carnet de Route d'un Compagnon Cuisinier (1995), as well as several cookbooks; gave celebrity endorsements to cheeses and other culinary products; and led the team that revised a new edition (2001) of Larousse Gastronomique, a premiere encyclopedia of food, first published in 1938. Robuchon's later television projects were Bon appétit bien sûr and Planète gourmande.

On May 7, 2003, Robuchon opened a new restaurant, L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, located on the Left Bank in Paris, in the Hotel Pont Royal. "I'm coming back through a very small door," he told Florence Fabricant of the New York Times (August 21, 2002). "What I have in mind is a place with a very relaxed convivial atmosphere. That's what I think people want. There will be lots of interaction between the chef and the customers." L'Atelier was far more informal (and less expensive) than Jamin or Restaurant Joël Robuchon were and features a radical design for a fine restaurant: a large, U-shaped counter surrounding an open kitchen. Customers sit around the counter on stools and watch the chefs prepare the food. "Everything will revolve around the kitchen," Robuchon told Fabricant. "The food will depend on the best products in the market, simply prepared. It's the opposite of what I was doing before. And there's really nothing like it in Paris." In his previous restaurants, Robuchon rarely left the kitchen to interact with customers, but at L'Atelier he frequently talked with people as he prepared their meals; he attributed his inspiration for the new approach to his experience performing every day on French television. "Now [Robuchon] has something to prove," Pierre Gagnaire, another Michelin three-star chef in Paris, said, as quoted by Fabricant. "He has already personified perfection for a generation of chefs. It'll be interesting to see how he'll pull off something so simple. Expectations will be high."

L'Atelier received favorable reviews: "I'm betting on Robuchon," R. W. Apple Jr. wrote for the New York Times (May 21, 2003). "I think he's right in judging that most people today want real food, full of flavor but not needlessly complex, served without ceremony in a good-looking space by agreeable people. That's what he's offering here." The popular response to the new restaurant was extraordinary. "There are entire internet message boards in the US devoted to L'Atelier," Decca Aitkenhead wrote for the London Observer (August 10, 2003), "with fierce arguments raging about everything from the carpaccio langoustines with pink peppercorns, to the ‘icy efficiency’ of the service and ‘weird’ lunch-counter design."

Robuchon went on to open an L'Atelier restaurant in Tokyo during 2003. Others followed in cities across the globe, including in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2005 and in London, New York, and Hong Kong in 2006. He also reintroduced more traditional restaurants under his name, including one in Las Vegas that received three Michelin stars in 2008. With the success of these ventures, Robuchon continued to expand into new areas. In 2008 he opened Yoshi, his first establishment focusing on Japanese cuisine, in Monaco. He brought both his L'Atelier and his Joël Robuchon Restaurant to Singapore in 2011, with the latter becoming the first restaurant in that country to receive three Michelin stars. In 2017 the New York branch of L'Atelier, which had closed in 2012, reopened in a new location, drawing much acclaim and attention. La Boutique Dassaï Joël Robuchon, a collaboration with Hiroshi Sakurai, director of the Dassaï sake brand, opened in Paris in 2018.

Robuchon's interest in Japanese cuisine was also reflected in his effort to introduce healthier dishes in his restaurants and in his own diet. This goal fit well with his longstanding preference for simple ingredients, which only grew stronger as his career progressed. "The older I get, the more I realize the truth is: the simpler the food, the more exceptional it can be," he told Business Insider in an oft-quoted 2014 interview.

Although he spent his career in pursuit of culinary perfection, Robuchon told Wells that "the perfect meal does not exist." He continued: "It could well be a slice of toasted bread and some melted cheese, or fondue, shared with a friend. It's a question of simplicity, spontaneity, good times with friends." In Robuchon's opinion, "it's only later, long after you've experienced a great meal, that you realize, in retrospect, how wonderful and how perfect it really was."

Robuchon claimed to have no interest in awards or rankings other than Michelin's, but his many accolades include, in addition to the Meilleur Ouvrier de France and the Pierre Taittinger Prize (1970), the Grand Award of Wine Spectator (2009) and the Laurent Perrier 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award of the S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants.

Robuchon and his wife, Janine, lived in primarily in Paris while maintaining a vacation home in Spain and frequently visiting Robuchon's restaurants around the world. They had two children, Eric and Sophie; both became involved in the restaurant industry and Sophie appeared with Robuchon on Planète gourmande. On August 6, 2018, Robuchon died in Geneva, Switzerland, at the age of seventy-three. The cause was said to be complications from pancreatic cancer, which he had been diagnosed with and treated for more than a year before. His death was formally announced by the government of France, and was met with an outpouring of tributes to the legendary chef.

Selected Books:

Ma Cuisine Pour Vous, 1986; Simply French, 1991; Le Carnet de Route d'un Compagnon Cuisinier, 1995; L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, 1996; La Cuisine de Joël Robuchon: A Seasonal Cookbook, 2001; The Complete Robuchon, 2008; French Regional Food, 2014 (with Loic Bienassis); Food & Life, 2014 (with Nadia Volf); My Best, 2016

Further Reading:

Business Insider Mar. 28, 2014

Chicago Sun-Times p8 Dec. 10, 1997, with photo

Eater website Sep. 23, 2011

Grimes, William. "Joël Robuchon, a French Chef Festooned with Stars, Is Dead at 73." The New York Times, 6 Aug. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/obituaries/joel-robuchon-a-french-chef-festooned-with-stars-is-dead-at-73.html. Accessed 20 Nov. 2018.

Hartford Courant E p1 Dec. 25, 1991

Los Angeles Times p3 June 6, 1996

New York Times C p1 Nov. 6, 1991, with photo, F p1 Aug. 21, 2002, with photo, F p1May 21, 2003, with photo, May 30, 2012

[London] Observer, Aug. 10, 2003

[Singapore] Straits-Times Mar. 31, 2011

Today Apr. 17, 2014

USA Today D p1 Apr. 14, 1995, with photo

Zagat website Oct. 7, 2013