Michel Guérard

In the last few years Guérard has become almost as famous as Bocuse; certainly, in the world of cuisine, a person of endless controversy, the acme of modernity. Yet Guérard’s beginnings were ordinary enough. He was born in 1933 in Vétheuil, north of Paris; his family had a boucherie at nearby Mantes-la-Jolie. They were in a fair way of business, with a spread of hectares near Deauville where they bred the beef for their shop. The young Guérard enjoyed food but had no particular ambition to be a chef. At one time he wanted to be a priest, ‘actually a bishop was what I had in mind,’ then later an actor. It was only at seventeen, ‘already a bit late,’ that he decided on his career and went to work at Mantes-la-Jolie for Kléber Alix, who had a pâtisserie and take-away catering business. Alix was a fierce taskmaster who, if he was going to make veal vol-au-vent, would buy a whole calf, kill it himself and prepare the meat and likewise expected his apprentices to be able to do absolutely everything. It is to him that Guérard owes his skill in patisserie, which he believes is the best starting point for a chef, requiring as it does great exactitude and a knowledge of the physics and chemistry of its materials. After three years apprenticeship, Guérard passed his Certificat d’Aptitude Professionelle in 1953 and started on the usual rounds of a trainee chef, working in Rouen, Dieppe and a two-star restaurant at Tôtes.