A Guide To The World's Best Fine Dining Restaurants

For important milestone dates between 100AD to 1899, click here for information about buying 'A Guidebook To The World's Best Fine Dining Restaurants'at Amazon.

1940s  
Fernand Pointe at La Pyramid in Vienne begins to create 'nouvelle' cuisine (see Chapter 3) and becomes the elder statesman for this style. He trained a collective of the most new significant chef's than anyone in history, which included Paul Bocuse, Jean and Pierre Troigros, François Bise, and Alain Chapel. Four of the 18 Michelin 3-star restaurants in France in the 1980s.

 1969
Gault&Millau's 'Le Noveau Guide' was started by two restaurant critics, Henri Gault and Christian Millau.

 1970s
Chef's Become Superstars
They are no longer stuck back in the kitchen. They are led by Paul Bocuse (his picture to the right) and also later by his contemporaries, including Roger Verge for his innovation, Jean and Pierre Troisgros for their deft simplicity and skills, Michel Guérard for being instrumental in promoting healthier cuisine, Gaston Le Notre as the modern age patissier and Freddy Girardet for his sophistication and finesse.

1989
Paul Bocuse, Fredy Giradet & Joel Robuchon
Named chefs of the century by Gault&Millau with Bocuse for elevating chef's to superstars, Robuchon for the number of Michelin stars/number of high Gault&Millau rankings, and Girardet for his cooking(by my estimation).

 2000s
The Proliferation Of Top Fine Dining Worldwide
In France, Alain Ducasse` becomes the first chef to own two Michelin 3-stars and then three 3-stars(his picture to the right). In the United States, Thomas Keller became the first American chef to have more than one Michelin 3-star restaurant. 





 

1903
Escoffier 
Known as the King of Chefs and Chef of Kings, brought haute cuisine to the modern world and published Le Guide Culinaire. He revolutionized the fundamentals of French cooking, including how food is presented, and how it is served, and codified 100's of years of recipes.

Source: French Cooking: How and Why French Cuisine Came to Rule the World. (2021). Escoffier.edu- Blog.

Retrieved from:
https://www.escoffier.edu/blog/world-food-drink/french-cooking-how-and-why-french-cuisine-came-to-rule-the-world/


He could be referred to as the culinary 'Aristotle' of more modern times with Apicius as the ancient Aristotle. I will never forget the lessons from this old testament bible of wisdom. Takeaways include a simple mushroom duxelles recipe requiring the mushrooms be squeezed through a cheesecloth which hugely changes the flavor for the better that I have never seen followed anywhere else. The important difference between mirepoix and matignon (vegetables to make stock) with the latter almost has never been mentioned in recipes in the last 50 years. The list goes on and on.

 1931
The Michelin Guide awards it's first three stars to 7 restaurants. Le Café de Paris, la Tour d’Argent and Lapérouse in Paris and la Mère Brazier in Lyon, La Côte d'Or in Saulieu, l’Auberge du Père Bise in Talloires, and La Pyramide in Vienne.