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Still, the sparkle of the three etoiles was not quite enough. "Bernard was pretty much a manic depressive," says Chelminski. He once told a fellow chef he would kill himself if he lost a star. "All these exceptional beings who give you the impression of so much assurance, they are all very fragile," Loiseau's widow Dominique said on television last week. "They all have such strong moments of doubt."
Like France's other great chefs, Loiseau found he had to peddle his personality in order to afford to maintain three-star luxury. He became a TV personality and started selling a line of soups, champagne and even fennel-scented perfume. "Personally, I would not want two stars, let alone three," says actress Leslie Caron (Gigi, Chocolat), owner of another Burgundy restaurant. Caron, who knew Loiseau, believes the downturn in the economy and the looming war in Iraq must have driven him to despair.
But money did not kill Loiseau, insists Bernard Fabre, his financial director. "All of that is completely false. The restaurants were doing quite well." The guidebooks are denying guilt as well. "It's not a bad score or one less star that killed him," said GaultMillau head Patrick Mayenobe. "This great chef must have had other worries." A Michelin representative would only express sadness at Loiseau's death and confirm that his stars are safe--for this year, at least.
The day after the suicide, the Cote d'Or staff tried to keep the restaurant open, in the words of its website, "in the spirit of Loiseau." But after one day, the shaken crew found it could not go on. A sign over the menu in front of the restaurant, obscuring Loiseau's famous $65 frog's-legs appetizer, announced it would be closed for the week. Loiseau's spirit was, in the end, too hard to match.