(Paris) The director of the Michelin guide since 2018, Gwendal Poullennec, a keen traveler with a great culinary culture, has climbed the ranks of the sacrosanct guide one by one and today makes the highest ones tremble, move or collapse spheres of world gastronomy.
Its motto ? “In motion”, valid both for the guide born 124 years ago, and for his director, AFP learns from the entourage of the 44-year-old Frenchman.
The most influential man in world gastronomy walks quickly in town, pushes sprints on his racing bike with 14,000 km on the clock and sometimes spends less than “30 seconds” on the phone with chefs who lose a star, confides anonymously one of them at AFP.
The power of this boss, whose army of anonymous inspectors establishes recommendations each year in 45 countries, is also measured by the “no comments” that his name provokes in the industry.
“I’m just passing through, I’m here to ensure continuity,” defends the forty-year-old, wearing a Breton sweater, short beard, jeans and a red notebook like the guide he has been leading for five years.
Strong appetite
Among the Poullennecs, a very large family between Finistère (west of France) and Yvelines (Paris region), the restaurant was “not part of the habits”.
Barely graduated from Essec, a prestigious French business school, Gwendal Poullennec turned away from “repulsive multinationals” or auditing firms to enter the Michelin group, determined to “work on a French subject”, the gastronomic guide or nothing.
After a stint in the tire factories, the Clermont-Ferrand group assigned the young recruit to his fixed idea. Head to Burgundy, the mecca of French gastronomy, for a memorable and gargantuan first meal with a “salad like that of chocolate mousse”, he mimes, hilariously, and “tripe casserole”.
Since then, those who are lucky enough to have a “good appetite” and like to finish other people’s dishes just out of curiosity have learned to manage the excesses inherent to the role.
The boost came in 2006 when Gwendal Poullennec moved to Japan, discovered the subtleties of sushi “eaten by the ton” and succeeded in imposing the red guide on the ultra-codified country which fiercely defended its culinary traditions.
PHOTO PATRICK HERTZOG, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Gwendal Poullennec
“We sold half a million copies, more than Harry Potter! “, he congratulates himself.
In 2018, thanks to the retirement of the American Michael Ellis, a succession punctuated by rumors and suspicion in the backwater of gastronomic critics, the Frenchman, then general secretary, was named grand director.
Vehement quarrel
Its first five-year term is marked by the transition from paper to digital, the acquisition of Fooding – its young competitor –, the perpetuation of the complex economic model of the guide and its deployment in 45 countries.
The father of five daughters, who likes family dishes and baking his own bread, says he looks for “simple and readable cuisine” at the table, but “with mastery”.
Impossible for him to say more about his tastes, or his favorite dish, at the risk, like Chirac with calf’s head, of being served it ad nauseam.
For a star sauce that is visibly appreciated, he will say half-heartedly “it’s well linked,” notes AFP.
“You have to know how to read between the lines,” explains Damien Rodière, director of The Fork reservation platform and business partner.
For certain bosses who have to deal with sanctions, the young director can quickly become unbearable. Marc Veyrat thus came to sue him in Paris in 2019 for a vehement dispute over a supposed touch of cheddar in a soufflé and the loss of his third star.
Conflicting moments, “difficult, but necessary” says the one who, as he insists, intends to act “according to the interest of the reader, not the bosses” and who understands that we are trying to “destabilize the referee”, even if he is affected by it.
In the midst of the COVID-19 health crisis, its decision to release a 2021 guide with downgrades created an uproar.
It is therefore essential for him to maintain a distance from the chefs and their “dramaturgy”, almost all of whom he knows personally and with whom he sometimes exchanges recipes and family photos.
But, “the recommendation is based on talent, not on reputation or even less on your influence,” he concludes.