After a long battle with Parkinson's Disease, famed French chef Paul Bocuse died on Saturday in Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or, his birthplace. In fact, he died in the very same room upstairs in the family home-turned-restaurant that he was born. He was 91. In the 1970's Bocuse shook up the food world with his introduction to Nouvelle Cuisine. Some call him the first celebrity chef and was nicknamed the "pope" of French cuisine.
Bocuse was France's only chef to hold onto the Michelin Food's three-star rating for more than four decades. In 1989, the Gault-Millau, a rival guide to Michelin, named him the "chef of the century", as well as being given the same title by the Culinary Institute of America in 2011.
Mr. Bocuse operated the three-starred restaurant, L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges, and maintained brasseries in France, Switzerland, Japan and a culinary school at Écully, near Lyon, France. He also penned four cookbooks including “Paul Bocuse’s French Cooking (1977), “Paul Bocuse in Your Kitchen: An Introduction to Classic French Cooking” (1982), “Bocuse ŕ la Carte” (1989) and “Paul Bocuse: The Complete Recipes” (2011).
His
New York Times Obituary chronicles his long life and very full career.