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Interviewed by 7 Days TV, Pierre Gagnaire is now a chef recognized throughout the world. He is now one of the stars of the program Top chef and many of its establishments have obtained their stars in the Michelin Guide. However, 28 years ago, the chef “lost everything“. He thus revealed to our colleagues how and why he had decided to close the door, he who was not at all predestined for cooking when he was little, quite the contrary.
“Not having chosen this profession at the start, I was forced to enter this world, so it was mainly suffering at the start, I had no pleasure” he revealed, specifying that it was his father, a chef, who put him behind the stove. Over the years, Pierre Gagnaire finally developed a real passion for the arts of the table. But in 1996, everything collapses.
You will do anything to survive
Near Paris Match, he had lifted the veil on what was, according to him, the origin of his failure: “I imagine that the sheer strength of my work and the quality of my cooking will be enough… A gigantic mistake! When you’re a restaurateur, you don’t just cook. You have all the hats: business manager, director, programmer… You have to take care of everything: the glassware, the cutlery, the flowers, the tablecloths. I, then inhabited by a kind of madness, I want to go quickly, far, I want to place my work in the era. From a job that was imposed on me, I want to make a small work of art. It’s therapy. I want to be a creator. But soon the business was no longer profitable at all and the banks demanded repayment of their loans. I will have to make concessions, comply with market expectations… at the risk of losing my third star (…) I refuse these compromises, so I go into personal liquidation and file for bankruptcy in 1996. I I don’t have a penny anymore, I don’t have a friend anymore, I don’t have anything left!“
“It’s me who realizes that I’m going to the wall and who decides with my wife at the time to stop everything. It was me who screwed myself up. There aren’t many big decisions you make in life, but this one is important. I projected myself five, ten years later and I said to myself, ‘but you’re going to do anything to survive, you want to do what you didn’t want to do when you were 25, so I did everything to fart” he continued.
A failure that became a real strength
Two years later, Pierre Gagnaire regained his three stars and was once again a maestro of French cuisine. A failure which is now the chef’s greatest “strength”. “I lost everything in 1996, I never forget it and I don’t fail to remember it either, because this failure was also, and still is, my strength” he confided to 7 Days TV from which he concludes wisely: “You must always keep in mind that everything can stop overnight.“
