Pierre Gagnaire: Une Vie en Cuisine

Perhaps best described as a catalog of the professional life of one of France’s greatest living chefs, this book, like Gagnaire himself, does not neatly conform to tradition and expectation.

There are recipes–something Gagnaire has been sparing with in earlier books–as well as photographs of plated food. The book presents itself as a chronology of his fifty-year career, beginning in 1973, when Gagnaire was just out of the army, offering a profile of his character and life by his co-author Julien Fouin.

There are photographs of the chef’s astonishingly orderly kitchen notebooks, and seasonal menus beginning in 1981 when he opened the first of his own restaurants, earning a Michelin star a year later. Many sections are almost like a scrapbook, including a clipping of the announcement that Alain Passard had taken over Alain Senderens’ restaurant, a congratulatory note from Michel Bras on his second star, and from Paul Bocuse on his third.

At 480 pages, despite its chronological focus, this is something of a ramble, but a revealing one.