French chef Gerald Passedat, owner of the restaurant Le Petit Nice, works in his restaurant's kitchen, in Marseille, southern France. Le Petit Nice was the only new three-star rated restaurant in The Michelin Guide for 2008, the bible of gastronomy.
PARIS – The restaurant where Napoleon ate is no longer fit for a king.
Le Grand Vefour, a two-century-old Paris institution overlooking the Palais Royal gardens, lost its coveted third Michelin star earlier this month – the only restaurant with the guide’s highest ranking to be downgraded in the 2008 edition of the French bible of gastronomy.
Only one establishment, Le Petit Nice in the southern port city of Marseille, was upgraded to three stars.
Inspectors dined at chef Guy Martin’s Le Grand Vefour 10-12 times in two years before deciding to demote it, said Jean-Luc Naret, the guide’s director.
“The problem was consistency,” he told The Associated Press. “Guy Martin didn’t lose any of his talent, but when you have one of the 68 best restaurants in the world, you have to be good every day.”
Martin, who worked his way up from humble beginnings – in a pizza parlor – to run the classic French dining establishment, did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment. His newest project is a Boston restaurant called Sensing.
Classic dishes at Le Grand Vefour include foie gras raviolis with truffle cream sauce, as well as hazelnut and milk chocolate pastry with caramel ice cream and a touch of sea salt.
The restaurant dates back to 1784, and guests dine amid 18th-century gilded decor and delicate hand-painted panels. Past guests include Napoleon and his wife Josephine, as well as writers Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Colette and Andre Malraux, according to its Web site.
The Michelin guide for France, in French and English lists 435 one-star establishments, 68 with two stars and 26 with three.
The only new restaurant to win three stars this year was also the first in Marseille to earn Michelin’s highest rating, Naret said.
Le Petit Nice, which overlooks the Mediterranean and specializes in seafood, was founded in 1917 by the grandfather of the current chef, Gerald Passedat.
Passedat called the prize a “consecration for three generations of chefs,” telling LCI television that he felt “great emotion, respect and honor for my family, clients and team.”
His menu includes a modern interpretation of bouillabaisse, which the restaurant promises is “light, zephyr-like and tasting of the sea.”
Naret said Passedat was rewarded for using local ingredients and reinterpreting his family’s recipes to “astonishing” effect.
The Michelin guide was more than usually talkative about its decisions – possibly a reaction to a tell-all book by a former inspector who caused a storm in 2004 by alleging that the guide checked restaurants only sporadically and let some chefs undeservedly keep stars mostly because of their prestige.
Naret insisted that the Michelin guide’s anonymous inspectors – whose reviews can make or break a chef’s career – do not wield their opinions carelessly.
He said some of the 15 full-time inspectors keep their jobs hidden from family members. Any inspector unmasked by a restaurant is banned from the surrounding region for five years.
The average inspector drives some 18,000 miles a year and visits 800 restaurants and hotels. And though inspectors stuff themselves constantly with haute cuisine, the stereotype is wrong: Inspectors generally are slim, not chubby.
“It’s the Michelin diet,” Naret said. “French women don’t get fat, and Michelin inspectors don’t either.”