When Michel Guérard was five he decided that he wanted to be a pastry chef. He would walk to the only restaurant in the village — “just a few chocolates from the house where I was born” — and sing until the chef opened the window and passed him a cake (he never knew if it was meant as a reward or a plug for his mouth).
He also wanted to be a doctor and the impact he would have on the culinary world, as one of the first Gallic celebrity chefs, was in many ways a fine pairing of the two. Long before waist-trimming recipes became a staple of the western diet, Guérard was championing a Japanese style of cooking that focused on freshness,