The tasting menu has fallen from fashion, and this is good. They are a curio – a window to the chef’s soul – and they have always incited more pity in me than awe. They draw the chef’s subconscious on the plate, and it isn’t always palatable; or, rather, it is too complex for joy.
In their own words, they are unhappy. In The Devil in the Kitchen, Marco Pierre White writes that he was haunted by the loss of his mother, and his kitchen was an attempt to recover her. ‘I suppose,’ he wrote, ‘I was trying to kill myself but sacrificing your health for your career was all the rage.’
Bernard Loiseau (three Michelin stars) killed himself in 2003. Anthony Bourdain killed himself in 2018. François Vatel, hero to chefs, stabbed himself in 1671, as he was preparing a banquet for Louis XIV, because the fish was late. White writes: ‘Why aren’t I happy?’ He gave his Michelin stars back in 1999: he got better.
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