26-08-2017
A beautiful portrait of a very elegant Christian Millau, the culinary critic who founded the Gault&Millau guide, together with Henri Gault. They revolutionised the restaurant industry with the Nouvelle Cuisine manifesto published in 1973. While Gault died at 70 in July 2000, Millau passed away at 88, on the 5th of August 2017 in Paris
He kept his first name Christian with great affection, though his surname was a pen name. Indeed, the person everyone knew as Christian Millau had in fact a very different, and double, surname: Dubois-Millot. We owe him and Henri Gault (born Gaudichon) one of the most important guides ever, especially in the past, the Gault&Millau. But most of all we owe them the intuition, definition and explosion of the Nouvelle Cuisine in the Seventies. Whether one likes it or not, it changed the restaurant industry just like Ferran Adrià and the Spanish chefs did in between the two centuries, between the Nineties and the Zero years.
Millau passed away on the 5th of August, at 88, 18 years after Gault, who died at 70, in July 2000. In a bare press release, the guide’s publishers defined Millau as «an impertinent and independent author». For sure, he was intelligent and forward-looking. As legend goes, votes out of twenty, much more flexible than those out of ten, were invented almost by chance, by summing the votes each one gave out of ten. Then came the “hats” acting as a counterpart to the Michelin stars, the guide par excellence, which they always felt rigid and mostly dedicated to celebrating France the way it was, without leaving space or paying attention to new talents.
A shot from Christian Millau’s funeral on the 16th of August in Paris
In the Gault&Millau website there’s an enlightening paragraph dedicated to their debut: «They first settled in an unassuming flat in Rue Montmartre, then in the back of a shop close to Place Maubert. The chaos was immense, visitors sat on boxes of Bordeaux wine. Indeed it was among those dirty glasses and that chaos that in March 1969 the Nouveau Guide was born. Poverty was a good thing because it had to apply to cooking too. There was too much butter, too much cream and even the best dishes ended up being worthless. Real talent must aim for simplicity. And this is the hardest part».
Henri Gault and Christian Millau in a photo taken in 1977 (Keystone archive)
1. "Don’t cook too much." 2. "Use fresh and high quality products." 3. "Make the menu lighter." 4. "Don’t be systematically modernist." 5. "But do look for the contribution of new techniques." 6. "Avoid marinading, hanging, fermenting, etc." 7. "Cut out sauces and rich condiments." 8. "Don’t ignore dietetics." 9. "Don’t trick your dishes’ presentation." 10. "Be inventive."
An anthology of some types of cuisine by Gianluca Biscalchin
In Italy, however, it’s still an insult. There’s nothing worse than saying of a chef that he’s «the one who does nuvel cusin». But this goes well beyond two important figures such as Gault and Millau.
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born in Milan in March 1955, at Il Giornale for 31 years dividing himself between sports and food, since 2004 he's the creator and curator of Identità Golose. blog www.paolomarchi.it instagram instagram.com/oloapmarchi