Michel Guérard has gone

I remember it like it was yesterday: thatlong-awaited moment when I met him and the two of us chatted during an interview with the newspaper Le Temps. He was 80 years old and I had just started writing articles for the French-language daily. Imagine sitting opposite the immense Michel Guérard. We chatted for over an hour, and I felt as if only a few seconds had passed. We talked about life, family, cooking of course, Eugénie-les-Bains and many other subjects. A quality moment that will stay with me forever.

A great instigator of nouvelle cuisine, he took up the challenge of making it lighter, invented slimming cuisine and was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1976. Michel Guérard was a forerunner in this field, and despite his avant-garde approach to cuisine, he has remained the most discreet chef of a golden generation… yet one of the most influential. During this journalistic aside, he told me: “I cook like a bird sings: by being free, limpid, light, cheerful, airy, ample, serene, silky and suave…”.