Chefs’ mal de vivre

The news of a suicide, especially if the person taking his life seemed to have everything, always leaves you stunned. As in the case of Benoît Violier, 44 and three Michelin stars at Hotel de Ville in Crissier near Lausanne, Switzerland. In July 2015 he had taken over another great chef, Philippe Rochat, betrayed by his heart while cycling. Today, on Monday 1st February, he was awaited at the presentation of the French edition of the Michelin guide. The news of his suicide in his home overtops any expectations from the new edition of the red guide.

While the greatest Italian journalist, Tommaso Besozzi, killed himself in 1964 when he was only 61 because he could no longer write, devoured by an A4 sheet of paper that remained white, Benoit certainly wasn’t suffering from the stress of stars and acknowledgements. It’s easy to trot out the most striking cue to justify extreme gestures, yet in very few cases the votes given by guides and critics have had a role in a voluntary death.

The story and a film with Gerard Depardieu in the main role recall the incident of François Vatel, born in 1631 in Paris, who took his life thirty years later in Chantilly with three strikes of sword because fish arrived late and there was not enough of it at a banquet. He was a perfectionist, just like another French chef, three centuries and a half later, Bernard Loiseau, to whose life and death journalist Rudolph Chelminski dedicated a splendid biography titled "The Perfectionist". Born in 1951, the patron of the Côte d'Or in Saulieu in Burgundy, in February 2003 ended his agony with his hunting rifle. He suffered from bipolarity and his economic problems were surely of no help just like the downgrading in the GaultMillau, from 19 to 17 out of 20. Then there were some who anticipated the loss of the third star, which curiously never took place until this very day, and he got swallowed by the black whole he had inside. His widow Dominique never rid the following trials to the guides, with Paul Bocuse in the front line. We’ll never know if it was because she really believed it or if it was a matter of convenience. The stars in Saulieu today are one less, but the show still goes on every day.

Even in this sad show, there are different kinds of suicide. The same year as with Loiseau, in 2003 but in October, Pierre Jaubert, chef and patron at Hotel de Bordeaux in Pons killed himself: he had no stars so there’s almost no trace of the drama that is first of all private and shakes the life of the family of the person doing so.

In Italy Franco Colombani, the great keeper of the tradition of the Po Valley at Locanda del Sole in Maleo, near Lodi created lots of uproar. At the end of May 1996, he put his head in a plastic bag. In the words of Gianni Mura on La Repubblica: "He certainly didn’t care about having lost a star in December 1994 on the Michelin guide. He certainly cared more about losing in those months the love of his wife Silvana on which he had based the history and legend of that inn-and-restaurant that for 90 years had been ruling the roost in terms of taste". Vanished love and plenty of bitterness after all the sweetness.

Colombani, among other things, had founded Linea Italia in Cucina in 1980 in order to set a boundary not to the prophets of Nouvelle Cuisine, those following Marchesi, that is, but to the terrible imitators appearing everywhere just because they were rather good at making use of the success of others, being themselves incapable of having a new and winning idea. Banks were also hounding Colombani just like with Sauro Brunicardi, another historic character in Italian cuisine, in this case the one from Tuscany, as his Mora was in Ponte a Moriano, 8 km from Lucca. It was December 2009, the star had just been confirmed, but too much money had been invested in unsuccessful projects. It was the wrong year to make mistakes. Lehman Brothers had exploded in September 2008. Sauro let himself slip into the waters of the Serchio river. He had written to his family that he had no life left inside of him.