France’s most celebrated chef Paul Bocuse has died at the age of 91, after suffering from Parkinson’s disease for several years. He died in his famous restaurant near Lyon, a local chef close to the family told AFP news agency.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute, describing him as the “incarnation of French cuisine”. Bocuse rose to fame in the 1970s as a proponent of “nouvelle cuisine”, a healthier form of cooking.
The movement “profoundly changed” French cooking, Mr Macron said. “His name alone summed up French gastronomy in its generosity and respect for tradition but also its inventiveness,” the French president said.
Chefs across the country would be “crying in their kitchens”, he added.
Bocuse’s restaurant, L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, has had three Michelin stars since 1965 and he was named “chef of the century” by Michelin’s rival guide, the Gault-Millau, in 1989, and again by the Culinary Institute of America in 2011.
Tributes have poured in. French Interior Minister Gérard Collomb tweeted: “Paul Bocuse is dead. Gastronomy is in mourning. “Mr Paul was France. Simplicity and generosity. Excellence and art of living. The pope of gastronomes leaves us. May our chefs, in Lyon, as in the four corners of the world, long cultivate the fruits of his passion.”
