Paul Bocuse

He’s the grumpy pope of French cuisine, traditionalist and innovator, the one and only Monsieur Paul. A sprightly 80-year-old, Bocuse has shaken and shaped France’s great culinary heritage more than anyone else before him.

Yet his route to cooking was conventional. Born and raised in the rich traditions of the Lyons region, he comes from a family that has produced cooks over many generations and more than two centuries. It was only natural for him to start as a kitchen boy, turning his hand to some of the toughest and most boring tasks that cooking demands.

From such humble beginnings, Bocuse has risen to embody, at the highest degree, the art of food for which France is rightly celebrated. He has done so not by resisting change, but initiating it. He was amongst the very first to demonstrate that a chef can step out of the kitchen to engage with the public, to nurture a wider appreciation of food. He was also a pioneer of globalization, exporting French products to Japan in the late 1970s, dipping a toe in the U.S. market in the early 1980s, and appearing in one of the very first cooking programs to air on German television in 1988.

Just as we can speak of classical painters or writers, Monsieur Paul is a classical chef. Being classical means he hates unnecessary artifice — in fact, he considers all artifice unnecessary. And he’s right. By insisting on quality of produce and rigor of technique, Bocuse discovered a surefire recipe for excellence.