VIDEO. Chef Pierre Gagnaire talks about his failures

“Having your furniture stolen, no longer having a credit card, losing your dignity. 25 years of my life was disappearing”. In 1996, then manager of his own restaurant, chef Pierre Gagnaire filed for bankruptcy. “I cooked for years experiencing it as therapy, completely ignoring the fact that it was also a business. Reality caught up with me because, of course, we produce beautiful work every day. But for this beautiful work, you need an audience”. During this difficult period, he explains that he prefers to be in “financial disarray” than to lose his stars, a symbol of his value and the quality of his cuisine, says Pierre Gagnaire.

“All human life is punctuated by failure”

Thanks to the support of his family and his meeting with Jacques Fournier, co-founder of Carrefour, who lent him money, he relaunched Le Balzac in Paris and in just 5 years won the 3 stars he was so attached to. “I think every human life is fraught with failure. This resilience that we carry within us is the energy that we have, it is the quality of the project that we are defending, the sincerity of the project. The fact of having immediately regained these stars, I was able to have the chance to have incredible opportunities”, explains Pierre Gagnaire. Today, he takes his cuisine around the world by opening restaurants in London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Moscow, Berlin.

For him, cooking is like fulfilling a mission where he gives the best of himself to those who taste his dishes. It is also the duty to train young people in its kitchens, to share with them what it is, what it defends and to give them access to the best products, to excellence and to offer them the keys to build their life. At the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, moviegoers were able to catch a glimpse of Pierre Gagnaire in the director’s latest film Trần Anh Hungentitled “The Passion of Dodin Bouffant” which is scheduled for release in French cinemas on October 8, 2023.