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"FacebookPinterest\n\nPaul Bocuse has done more to glorify French cuisine than any other living restaurateur, and for this he has been suitably honored. He was named \u201Cchef of the century\u201C by the Gault Millau restaurant guide and has been immortalized in statuary at the Mus\u00E9e Gr\u00E9vin in Paris. He created a prize, the Bocuse d\u2019Or, that is coveted by cooks simply because his name is on it, and he is so cherished throughout his homeland that he has been known to drag massive cuts of well-marbled American beef through French customs while inspectors shrug and look away.\n\nNow, as he approaches 80 years of age, he need only perform one more gracious act to preserve his reputation. He must close his restaurant.\n\nThe restaurant Paul Bocuse, which he named for himself before such a vain (if logical) act was commonplace, can be found just outside Lyon, a city long considered (except by me) to be the gastronomic capital of the nation. Paul Bocuse retains a score of three stars, the highest awarded by the Michelin guide. Such a rating denotes exceptional cuisine \u201Cworth a special journey.\u201C The experience of dining at Bocuse cannot be duplicated at any other Michelin three-star establishment. It is uniquely disturbing. At a visit this past January, I spent most of my dinner shaking my head in disappointment, although at moments I was bent over with laughter (during the cheese course) or sitting bolt upright in outrage (throughout a musical performance by a black employee dressed as an organ-grinder\u2019s monkey). This is not how I would choose to remember the greatest cuisinier since the fabled Auguste Escoffier, but I have no choice, because I will never enter that establishment again.\n\nWhile ostentatious and somewhat dated, the building that houses the restaurant does not detract from the pleasure of a meal. Inside, the restaurant is too bright and too warm and the tables are too close together, but the copper pots gleam, the shelves appear to be dusted regularly, and the napery is luxurious. The place isn\u2019t Versailles, but it\u2019s more than respectable. I\u2019ve been there twice. During the first visit, in the mid-\u201990s, the room was almost empty and the meal was acceptable, if forgettable. A day later, I couldn\u2019t remember much of what I\u2019d eaten except for the famous black-truffle soup with its puff-pastry dome, as good as its reputation. This past January, I returned with four friends. We each ate a fid-price meal that cost approximately $190, tax and tip (but not wine) included. On the set menu was the same signature soup, pan-fried scallops with sauce P\u00E9rigueux, a granit\u00E9 prepared with Beaujolais wine, chicken with black truffles cooked in a pig\u2019s bladder, cheeses and a selection of desserts.\n\nThe truffle-scented soup, which exhales a cloud of pungent vapor when its crust is pierced, was again the only noteworthy dish. The flavor of the Gamay grape was captured by the granit\u00E9, and I suppose that\u2019s also to be admired. The remainder of the meal was a disaster: Wine service was nonchalant, wineglasses too small, cheeses a joke and many of the desserts inedible. Even the bread\u2014two kinds of rolls relentlessly served with every course\u2014was the stuff of a neighborhood boulangerie. Most depressing were the disastrous main courses, because they supposedly epitomize the cuisine of Bocuse. The pan-fried scallops came in an overly sweet, shockingly rustic, dull brown interpretation of sauce P\u00E9rigueux, which is made with Madeira wine, foie gras and chopped black truffles and is intended to epitomize luxury. Only if I were dining in a farmhouse would I have sent my compliments to the cook.\n\nChicken cooked en vessie, which means in a swollen pig\u2019s bladder, is intended to be an ercise in culinary showmanship. The dish dates from the days when French furniture and French cuisine had much in common\u2014they were both about ornamentation, not pleasure. The presentation was delightful, but then we were obliged to eat. Steaming a chicken in a bladder might seal in the flavor, but it turns nearly everything inside either tough and rubbery (the skin) or mushy and overcooked (the vegetables). By scraping aside most of what was on my plate (bloated rice, soggy greens, revolting skin) and concentrating on the edible bits, I was able to cobble together a few nice bites of chicken with morels in a pleasant cream sauce\u2014tolerable bistro cuisine.\n\nWhat made the main courses particularly distressing is that Bocuse was walking around throughout the dinner service, presumably to assure that every dish leaving the kitchen was up to three-star standards. In reality, he strode through the dining room looking both majestic and remote, once or twice stopping for a photograph with a favored customer. He has become the Flying Dutchman of French cuisine, sailing aimlessly through his premises.\n\nThe cheese cart was unquestionably the worst I\u2019ve come upon in a Michelin-starred restaurant, and the only one I\u2019ve seen presented without pride. The theme: unripe cheeses with hard rolls. My knife literally bounced off an elasticized Camembert. There was an impressive quantity of cheeses on the cart, but only because of mindless repetition\u2014a long line of tiny pyramids of goat cheese, disc after disc of the same St-Marcellin. I studied the selections carefully, looking for signs of uncharacteristic ripeness, and when I noticed a promising St-Marcellin, I eagerly pointed to it. The indifferent captain ignored my request, stuck his knife into an already cut half-disc close to him, and dropped it on my plate. That\u2019s when we all burst out laughing.\n\nThe first dessert, intended as a prelude, was a small cr\u00E8me brl\u00E9e. As I was praising mine on the grounds of acceptability, which was all we could hope for by now, a friend sitting next to me pointed to his. There was a runny residue under the brittle caramelized sugar.\n\nFor my principal dessert, I selected baba au rhum, which is rum-soaked sponge cake, a favorite of mine. The texture was of a cake soaked days earlier, and the flavor was decidedly off, as though the rum were corked, like a spoiled wine. I tasted a friend\u2019s apple tart, which consisted of mushy apples over a good, crunchy crust topped with flavorless vanilla ice cream.\n\nCouldn\u2019t get worse?\n\nIt did, because Paul Bocuse manages to set back cuisine and endorse cultural stereotypes at one sitting. The person who had opened the restaurant door for us when we arrived was a small black man wearing a short, tight jacket and a flat, round cap. Outfits like these are generally seen on bellhops in 1930s Hollywood films and on the monkeys that dance to barrel organs. While we were having dessert, this man was called on to provide entertainment. He operated some sort of upright instrument that imitated an organ-grinder\u2019s music. I would suggest to Bocuse, if he so enjoys offensive gestures, additional means of entertaining his guests: Dress a short, swarthy man as an Orthodox Jew and have him play Shylock, going table to table changing dollars into euros. Or hire a clueless French film critic to proclaim the greatness of Jerry Lewis. The fun could go on and on.\n\nI can tell you exactly what organization is to blame for all of this: the Michelin guide. Supposedly incorruptible, it has lowered its standards in the case of Bocuse, not for payoffs or for advertising but for sentiment. It has refused to do what is essential, something it has done countless times before: declare by means of lower ratings that a chef\u2019s time is done. The guide has been appropriately ruthless with chefs as accomplished (but not as revered) as Bocuse, including Roger Verge of Moulin de Mougins and Marc Meneau of L\u2019Esp\u00E9rance. Even Alain Ducasse, the preeminent French restaurateur of this generation, has seen the stars awarded his restaurant Louis XV in Monaco come and go and come back again.\n\nOne of my friends at the dinner said he thought it might be possible to enjoy the cuisine of Bocuse, although nowhere near Lyon. He claimed to have had a very satisfactory meal of escargots, fish and cr\u00E8me brl\u00E9e at the Epcot Center in Florida, where Bocuse lends his name to the dining pavilion called Chefs de France. He said Bocuse as interpreted by Disney was preferable to Bocuse left on his own."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/paul-bocuse-lyon-france>