Death
In the late 1990s, a new form of Asian-inspired "fusion cuisine" swept France, catering to an international corporate class and pleasing trend-driven "foodies" (a neologism of the movement), which Loiseau resisted. The prevailing notion, however, was that the pre-eminent Loiseau's grip was slipping — that his cuisine and philosophy were being superseded by newer trends. He was by this time deeply in debt, and suffered from bouts of increasingly severe clinical depression.
Loiseau committed suicide on February 24, 2003, shooting himself in the mouth with his shotgun after a full day of work in his kitchen. The Gault Millau guide had recently downgraded his restaurant from 19/20 to 17/20, and there were also rumors in Le Figaro that the Michelin Guide was planning to remove one of La Côte d'Or's three stars.
Loiseau had made a life's ambition of becoming a 3-star chef, a goal which had required 17 years of hard work at La Côte d'Or to achieve. After his death, three-star chef Jacques Lameloise said Loiseau had once confided, "If I lose a star, I'll kill myself". While it was later reported that Loiseau was despondent over his debt issues and decreasing patronage at his restaurant, Michelin still received blame in some accounts.
As of 2007 La Côte d'Or remained a three-star establishment in the hands of executive chef Patrick Bertron.
Read more about this topic: Bernard Loiseau
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