This summer, the Guérard family celebrated the 50th anniversary of Près d’Eugénie, the idyllic Landes hotel-restaurant where Michel joined his wife Christine, before winning three stars in 1977 for its “Grande Cuisine Minceur”.
In 2018, this tireless campaigner for Healthy Cuisine®, mischievously told us how he had embraced a healthier approach to gastronomy.
“I went on a diet for love. I was forty years old, with a joyful inclination towards gluttony and a rather festive temperament. I had been sleeping only ten hours a night for 10 years. I was eating very poorly and, without being fat, I had developed… a certain roundness.”
One evening when he was having dinner with the woman who would become his wife, Christine whispered in his ear: “You know Michel, if you lost a few pounds, it would suit you very well”. The chef was stunned and from one day to the next he launched into a sad waltz based on grated carrots, grilled meats and boiled vegetables, with the horrible sensation of being punished. “The frustration was too great. I knew that I would not last long without finding an excuse to dodge my diet”. Nevertheless, convinced that to win the heart of his beloved, he had to lose his excess weight, the chef immersed himself in history and books. “I remembered that when I was younger, I had read the books of Professor Jean Trèmolières, considered one of the fathers of modern nutrition in France. He stressed that when there is a dietary restriction, it must not be, in addition, a punishment”.
Michel Guérard had a path to explore: Finding a way and techniques to rebalance your diet while enjoying yourself.
It was the end of restrictions, we were letting off steam, we could finally eat our fill. So, in restaurants, we let loose on butter and cream.
Quite a challenge considering the ultra-rich meals inherited from the post-war period. “During my apprenticeship in the 1950s, we worked on classic Escoffier-type recipes. We never talked about diet. And for good reason, it was the end of restrictions, we let off steam, we could finally eat our fill. So, in restaurants, we let loose on butter and cream.”
A sign of his early interest in a caring cuisine, at the Pot-au-feu, his very popular gastronomic bistro in Asnières, the chef had already started to purify his dishes. His textures were crunchier and his sauces lighter so as not to mask the taste of seasonal products. He went to Les Halles three times a week in order to use only fresh and seasonal produce. He had already gotten rid of artifice and fads to concentrate on a cuisine that was more rebellious in its pairings and more natural in its seasonings and cooking.
But this was different, it was about completely rethinking the bases, the preparations and the interactions between the different ingredients. “I started by learning what the nutritional needs of a man were,” explains the chef, “then I compared them with the dishes that made me salivate. Then I had to try to combine the two. I did a lot of tests, I made a lot of mistakes but, little by little, I acquired the right reflexes.”
Honey and fructose have replaced refined sugar, and broths flavored with herbs and vegetable purées have replaced creamy sauces. “I love broths,” Michel Guérard emphasized, “you can work with them, refine them like a perfumer. In fact, I’m imagining perfumes that could be used in the composition of a broth, like patchouli.”
And to evoke the association of a patchouli broth with a red mullet gently cooked in the fireplace, delicately suspended from a string… The fireplace, according to this epicurean who is willingly a poet, is one of the most beautiful and healthiest cooking methods: somewhere between Neanderthal man and the Havana smoker. “It would be even better if we enhanced this broth with the liver of the red mullet. Using all parts of a product strengthens the taste without adding salt, in addition to avoiding waste. In short, abuse broths, they feed the imagination while helping us to use up leftovers, to hydrate ourselves and to reduce the proportion of oil in the vinaigrette.”
Having shed a few extra pounds of indulgence, Michel Guérard ended up marrying Christine in 1974 before flying away, with a lighter heart and body, to the spa village of Eugénie-les-Bains where he set up, alongside his gourmet restaurant, a Cuisine Minceur ® menu. His goal: to offer spa guests and all gourmets a light and balanced menu that is also a celebration. His long and patient work, in collaboration with his wife, nutritionists, dieticians, but also bakers and winemakers, has allowed him to better understand the physical and chemical phenomena that occur in cooking, in order to best adapt the search for taste to health requirements.
The soft-boiled egg in a green dress, the sea bass ceviche with mango and the light apple and lime soufflé have replaced the soft pillow of mushrooms and morels, the opulent guinea fowl from Chalosse, lamb sweetbread salpicon, truffled quenelles and the Marquis de Béchamel soft-boiled cake. “We called it Cuisine minceur ® because a healthier diet inevitably has an impact on the waistline. But our aim is rather to offer Cuisine et une Pâtisserie de Santé ®. It is to pass on our experience and our know-how in good and healthy cooking that Christine and I wanted to open our cooking school. Because there was an urgent need for nutritional education. The pathologies linked to diet (diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases) have never been so numerous.”
Michel Guérard was already sounding the alarm 50 years ago, which is why he also agreed to collaborate with Nestlé in general and Findus in particular to develop more balanced ready meals. “However, I have the impression that nothing has changed,” he complained in 2018. “Political power is not moving. National education is not moving. The sugar lobby still insists that a jam, to be called jam, must be composed of half sugar, when it is much better with more than 50% fruit! Worse, in hotel schools, future cooks are still not taught the basics of nutrition and dietetics. While a cook who, by essence, feeds others must make sure not to poison them. It’s like leaving the driving of a school bus in the hands of a driver who doesn’t have a license!”
However, in the 80s, the Guérards had led with Jacques Lang, then Minister of Culture, a reflection on the food served in hospitals: “Because for me, a hospital should be a hotel where health is offered and served”. Later, with Roselyne Bachelot, then Minister of Health, he had worked on a small white paper on nutrition, which, again, was not followed by concrete actions. So he launched his own institute to train professionals and individuals in Cuisine Santé®.
Until the end, this icon of French gastronomy continued to campaign for healthy eating. “For me, eating well should be taught to everyone, at school, in the same way that we learn to read and write. Before “getting lost” I would like to be able to get this project underway,” said the man who described himself as an eternal utopian. It is up to us to continue his fight.
To (re)read
– “La Grande Cuisine Minceur”, republished in 2009 by Robert Laffont.
– “How to shine in the kitchen without knowing how to cook an egg”, with Julie Andrieu, Ed. – Agnès Vienot – 2010
– “Essential Slimming, the great healthy cuisine, Ed. Albin Michel
Key dates
1933: Born in Vétheuil into a family of butchers and livestock farmers.
1950: Start of his apprenticeship as a pastry chef at Kléber lix, a caterer in Mantes-la-Jolie
1957: Appointed pastry chef at the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris
1958: At the age of 25, he became the Best Craftsman in France for Pastry and Ice Cream
1965: After having been pastry chef at the Lido and having worked with the great Jean Delaveyne at the Camélia in Bougival (78), he opened a bistro in Asnières-sur-Seine (92): Le Pot-au-feu.
1971: He won the 2nd star for the Pot-au-feu, which had become a must-see address.
1970-72: Explosion of “Nouvelle Cuisine” of which he became, along with Bocuse, Chapel, Senderens, Troisgros and Roger Vergé, one of the main figures.
1974: Marriage to Christine, whom he joined in Eugénie-les-Bains
1975: Launch of Cuisine Minceur®.
1976: He appeared on the cover of the American magazine “Time”
1977: The restaurant Les Prés d’Eugénie obtains 3 stars in the Michelin Guide
1978: Study trip to China to discover Chinese cuisine
2013: Creation of the Michel Guérard Institute, 1st Health Cooking and Pastry Training School®
2024: Jubilee of the Près d’Eugénie, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the establishment. Death of Michel Guérard on August 19.
