PARIS: Paul Bocuse, the master chef who defined French cuisine for nearly half a century and put it on tables around the world, has died at 91.
French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb announced Bocuse's death on Saturday on his official Twitter feed.
"Paul Bocuse is dead. ... The pope of gastronomy has left us," said Collomb, a former mayor of Bocuse's home city of Lyon. "Monsieur Paul was France. Simplicity and generosity. Excellence and art de vivre."
Bocuse was an early exponent of "nouvelle cuisine", which reinterpreted traditional French cooking using less butter and cream and focusing on fresh ingredients and stylish presentation.
Bocuse's temple to French gastronomy, L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges, outside Lyon in southeastern France, has held three stars -- without interruption -- since 1965 in the Michelin guide, the bible of gastronomes. He also parlayed his business and cooking skills into a globe-spanning gastronomic empire.
Bocuse, who underwent a triple heart bypass in 2005, had been suffering from Parkinson's disease.
Bocuse was a tireless pioneer, the first chef to blend the art of cooking with savvy business tactics -- branding his cuisine and his image to create an empire of restaurants around the globe.
As early as 1982, he opened a restaurant in the France Pavilion at the Epcot Center of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, headed by his son Jerome, also a chef. In recent years, Bocuse even dabbled in fast food with two outlets in his home base of Lyon.
"He has been a leader. He took the cook out of the kitchen," said celebrity French chef Alain Ducasse, speaking at a January 2013 gathering to honour Bocuse. More than 100 chefs from around the world travelled to Lyon for the occasion -- one of a string of such honours bestowed on Bocuse in recent years.
Bocuse's imposing physical stature and his larger-than-life personality matched his bold dreams and his far-flung accomplishments.
"Monsieur Paul", as he was known, was placed right in the centre of an August 2013 cover of the newsweekly Le Point that exemplified "The French Genius". Shown in his trademark pose -- arms folded over his crisp white apron, tall chef's toque atop his head -- he was winged by Marie Curie, Louis Pasteur and Coco Chanel, among a handful of other luminaries.
While excelling in the business of cooking, Bocuse never flagged in his devotion to his first love, creating a top class, quintessentially French meal. He eschewed the fads and experiments that have captivated many other top chefs.
"In cooking, there are those who are rap and those who are concerto," he told the French newsmagazine L'Express before the publication of his 2005 biography. He added that he tended toward the concerto.
In traditional cooking, like his, there is no room for guesswork. "One must be immutable, unattackable, monumental," he declared.
Born into a family of cooks that he dated to the 1700s, Bocuse stood guard over the kitchen of his world-famous restaurant even in retirement when he was not travelling, keeping an eye on guests, sometimes greeting them at the table.
The red and green Auberge by the Saone River, his name boldly set atop the roof, is a temple to Bocuse -- who was born there -- and to other great chefs.
In a 2011 interview with The Associated Press, Bocuse said he slept in the room where he was born, above the dining rooms.
Born on Feb 11, 1926, Bocuse entered his first apprenticeship at 16. He worked at the famed La Mere Brazier in Lyon, then spent eight years with one of his culinary idols, Fernand Point, whose cooking was a precursor to the nouvelle cuisine movement with his lighter sauces and lightly cooked fresh vegetables.
Bocuse's career in the kitchen traversed the ages. He went from apprenticeships and cooking "brigades", as kitchen teams are known, when stoves were coal-fired and chefs also served as scullery maids, to the ultra-modern kitchen of his Auberge.
"There was rigour," Bocuse told the AP. "(At La Mere Brazier) you had to wake up early and milk the cows, feed the pigs, do the laundry and cook. ... It was a very tough school of hard knocks."
"Today, the profession has changed enormously. There's no more coal. You push a button and you have heat."
Bocuse adapted seamlessly to the changing times, making his mark with a first coveted Michelin star in 1958, a second in 1960 and a third in 1965. Since then, his cooking has been defined by superlatives.
The gastronomic offerings at L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges are rooted in the French culinary tradition, simple, authentic food that was "identifiable" in its nature.
Emblematic of that is the crock of truffle soup topped with a golden bubble of pastry he created in 1975 for then-French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, which is served to this day.
And his favourite ingredient? Butter.