Michel Guérard

Michel Robert-Guérard (; 27 March 1933 – 19 August 2024), known as Michel Guérard, was a French chef, author, one of the founders of nouvelle cuisine and the inventor of cuisine minceur.

Early life and education Michel Guérard was born in 1933 in the Paris suburb of Vétheuil. At age six, World War II broke out, and he was raised just outside Rouen with his grandmother and then his mother. In town, his mother ran the family butcher shop after his father was drafted. He had the "kind of French country childhood that involved wading into streams barefoot to catch slippery trout with his hands, but also Nazi interrogations regarding the location of his family’s cows."

Career He related that "watching his grandmother bake pastry inspired him to become an apprentice, aged 14, at Kléber Alix's patisserie in Mantes-La-Jolie." He then learned "palace cuisine" at Paris's Hôtel de Crillon, later going on to become the establishment's head pastry chef

Spa resort and cuisine minceur In the village of Eugenie-les-Bains, he owned a 16-hectare farm along with his wife Christine, located on the spa where Empress Eugenie spent her summers. At the location, Les Pres D'Eugenie is his restaurant, located in the original Les Pres D'Eugenie Hotel opened in 1862. On 9 February 1976, he was featured on the cover of TIME with a cartoon of Guerard, then 42, and the line "The new gourmet law: hold the butter." After first winning three Michelin stars for his Les Prés d’Eugénie restaurant in 1974, 1975, and 1977, At one point, his restaurant at Les Prés d’Eugénie was awarded three Michelin stars for forty years consecutively, starting in 1977. In 1992, he also ran a vineyard, newly formed, which produced 37,000 bottles of his Baron de Bachen label annually. At the location, the couple has a cooking school for hobby chefs. They also in 2013 opened a training center for professional cooks.

Restaurants

At the time of his death he and Christine Guérard owned three restaurants in Eugénie-les-Bains: Les Prés d'Eugénie. Part of the main spa hotel, this restaurant serves cuisine gourmande, and has since 1977 received three stars in the Michelin Guide.