Bernard Loiseau

Chef who set out to be the Pelé or Ronaldo of his art

Bernard Loiseau, chef and businessman: born Chamalières, France 13 January 1951; twice married (three daughters); died Saulieu, France 24 February 2003.

The apparent suicide of one of the world's great chefs, Bernard Loiseau, at the age of 52, is an authentic tragedy. Loiseau was found dead in his bedroom in Saulieu, in Burgundy, with his rifle by his side, leaving behind his wife of 13 years, Dominique, and three young children.

Last week the 2003 Gault-Millau restaurant guide achieved a publicity coup by awarding 20/20, their first-ever perfect score, to Marc Veyrat, who has two restaurants, one at Annecy and the other at Megève; in the same edition, the Guide Gault- Millau reduced Loiseau's rating from 19/20 to 17/20.

Loiseau's even more famous friend Paul Bocuse immediately and openly accused the guide of being responsible for his death. Yesterday morning he stated on French television: "Yes, Gault-Millau killed him, I believe. They were seeking publicity for the relaunch of their guide – now they've got it." Patrick Mayenob, the managing director of Gault-Millau (of the guide's founders Henri Gault is dead and Christian Millau has retired), had already responded, also on television, to similar accusations on Monday evening: "I do not think in any case that Gault-Millau and its entry could have been the cause of the death of Bernard Loiseau." He added, "We gave an entirely favourable appreciation of his cooking."

(There have been several reports of chefs killing themselves over their ratings, but most have proved to be apocryphal. "In 1966," said The Wine Spectator in an article published on 31 August 2000, "upon learning his Paris restaurant, Relais des Porquerolles, had lost a star, chef Alain Zick blew his brains out. Michelin was quick to insist that there was no direct connection between Zick's suicide and his demotion in the guide.")

Both French government ministers and chefs are taking sides in this controversy, with Hervé Gaymard, Minister of Agriculture, saying about the practice of guides giving Michelin stars and numerical marks that "it can be very stressful for the great chefs". Marc Veyrat, who should have been the happy winner of this weird competition, said he had telephoned Loiseau shortly before he shot himself, and that he "was very, very affected" by his demotion and articles in the press about it. "God knows he did not deserve it."

Loiseau had a fragile ego. This was obvious even to people like me, who knew him only slightly, though over a period of many years. But he had problems that would have daunted anyone for, like his peers Bocuse and Georges Blanc of Vonnas, he was an insatiable entrepreneur.

In 1998, with debts of some 30 million French francs (£3m), he floated his company on the Bourse, and delighted in boasting that he was "the only cook on earth to be quoted" on the stock exchange. He raised Fr35m, and never looked back, until this week. He had expanded his business hugely, remodelling and refurbishing his core business, the restaurant La Côte d'Or at Saulieu, and opening the three "Aunts" in Paris, restaurants called Tante Louise, Tante Marguerite and Tante Jeanne. His picture appeared on a leading brand of frozen foods, and he had plans to build a chic hotel near Toulouse in 2004.

Bernard Loiseau was born in Puy-de-Dôme in 1951 and apprenticed from 1968 to 1971 to the Troisgros brothers in Roanne, which placed him in the centre of the nouvelle cuisine action, and meant that he was starting his career as near the top as it was possible to be. After doing his military service as a cook, he became the chef in Paris in 1972 of La Barrière de Clichy, and then La Barrière Poquelin.

He was already fired with ambition when he arrived in the Morvan in 1975, and took over the lease of La Côte d'Or at Saulieu, a hotel-restaurant that, in its better days, was one of the most celebrated in France. Between the 1930s and the 1960s the kitchens were presided over by Alexandre Dumaine, one of the culinary giants of the age, and a man who would have been as important in the history of haute cuisine as Fernand Point of La Pyramide in Vienne, who gets the credit for inventing nouvelle cuisine, except that Point was a great teacher, and Dumaine was hopeless in this regard. Within two years Loiseau had restored some of the place's former glory by winning his first Michelin star for his cooking.

Despite the fact that there was no overlap, Loiseau knew he would constantly be compared to Dumaine – the ghost in the kitchen. When I first ate at Loiseau's La Côte d'Or, he hadn't changed a thing since his predecessor's time – except the menu. It would have been like eating at a shrine, except that the food was so very much of the moment.

In those early years, the ever-ebullient Loiseau was experimenting with what he called cuisine à l'eau. He was very concerned about the name, as he had realised that it implied to English-speakers that all the food was boiled, which it certainly was not. It actually involved keeping flavours as pure as possible by using water to deglaze saucepans, in place of the more usual wine, spirits or stocks.

He started by adapting a couple of standard Burgundian ingredients, typical of the Morvan, frogs' legs and snails. His famous dish of sautéed frogs' legs with parsley sauce, using an extravagant quantity of puréed parsley, was shockingly green and vibrant-tasting. Snails came with nettle tops given the same treatment, and both were utterly delicious.

Loiseau was always huge fun to meet. "A smile on two feet," said André Daguin, another of the great chefs, in a television tribute on Monday night, "a smile up to his ears." Loiseau always had worries, sometimes it was his love-life, sometimes money, but he never showed it – if anything, he was usually a little manic.

Once in the 1980s, when I brought Jane Grigson to dine with me, he couldn't contain his delight, and seemed to dance around the table as he brought out one unordered dish after another. Grigson had been a little nervous about the cuisine à l'eau business, but was completely won over, both by the food and the cook. On another occasion I disgraced myself by not realising that the youngish woman Loiseau had seated me next to when he was hosting a lunch was a Bourbon and considered herself at least a little bit royal. (As we were near in age, I had unthinkingly addressed her as "tu".) We had a very good laugh about it in the bar that evening.

He had bought La Côte d'Or in 1982 and began the renovation; in 1985 he added a new hotel wing and was admitted to the Relais & Châteaux marketing group, which was very important commercially. In 1990 he went seriously into debt to alter, at last, Dumaine's restaurant by building dining rooms in the garden; and he bought the building next door to put in a new kitchen.

He'd got his first Michelin star (and 17/20 in Gault-Millau) as far back as 1977; the second star came in 1981. But to his puzzlement (and mine) he had to wait a further 10 years to get his third Michelin star, though Gault-Millau had given him a near-perfect 19.5 in 1990. It finally came in 1991 when he was also named chef of the year by Gault-Millau.

The frustration and thwarted ambition of 1990 was recorded in a sort of business/biography, Burgundy Stars: a year in the life of a great French restaurant by William Echikson, published in the United States in 1995, and had the result of making Loiseau better known in America than he was in Britain – though La Côte d'Or had been a place of pilgrimage for British gastronomes in Dumaine's day. Loiseau himself published six books of recipes, including one for children.

Three stars achieved, now the honours came thick and furious, with appointment as Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1995; upgraded hotel symbols in the Michelin in 1998; the same in the Relais & Châteaux guide in 2001; and, last year, promotion to the rank of officer of the Ordre National du Mérite. Loiseau rejoiced in his awards with almost childish pleasure. In a 2001 interview he exulted: "It's fabulous. I've made the front page of The New York Times. It was my goal to be a great cook, a bit like a footballer who wants to be a Ronaldo or a Pelé."

To those who doubted his long-term prospects when he was first listed on the Bourse, he said "I am a marathon runner, not a sprinter." And commenting on the relation of his three less ambitious Paris restaurants to his Saulieu flagship, he insisted, "Everything has been thought out and calculated. . . I'm like Yves Saint-Laurent. I do both haute couture and prêt-à-porter."

He was an inspiration to his staff. "It's true, I'm very demanding. But I believe that my employees have a good life because they know what the stakes are – how to win a third Michelin star."

However, even before 11 September 2001 the Americans had cut down on travel abroad, and there were rumblings of worldwide recession in the hotel and restaurant industries. It was not a good time to expand. Then, after that terrible day, the bottom fell out of the luxury restaurant business, especially for those establishments outside capital cities. So-called destination restaurants such as La Côte d'Or were particularly hard hit, as foreigners have few other reasons to travel to Saulieu except to eat there.

Daguin, the current president of the trade organisation UMIH, l'Union des Métiers et des Industries de l'Hôtellerie, mourned Loiseau's death in almost melodramatic terms: "Saulieu is an orphan, three children are orphaned as well. Our agriculture has lost one of its most talented, influential leaders and France herself is impoverished."

Bocuse counted Loiseau a close friend. "With Pierre Troisgros we made a trio," he said. "There was something fragile about him and, at the same time, something always joyous."

Paul Levy