PARIS (AFP) - French master pastry chef Gaston Lenôtre, who built a worldwide empire with his gourmet dessert creations that defined modern patisserie, died Thursday January 8, 2009 at the age of 88.
Lenôtre passed away at his home in the central French region of Sologne after a long illness, said a statement released by his company.
President Nicolas Sarkozy led a flow of tributes pouring in for "one of the greatest masters of taste."
"Thanks to his talent and creativity, his rigour and excellence, he elevated patisserie to the rank of art form," he said in a statement.
"We have lost a very great man," said three-star chef Alain Ducasse, a fellow global ambassador for French cuisine who learned the art of pastry-making from Lenôtre as a young man.
Born to parents who both worked as cooks in the northwest region of Eure, Lenotre opened his first pastry shop in Paris in 1957 in the well-heeled 16th arrondissement of the French capital.
Soon he attracted a loyal clientele with his mouth-watering array of mousses, macaroons and charlotte cakes and turned Lenôtre into a brand name synonymous with fine patisserie.
Lenotre broke from traditional French pastry-making by inventing lighter creations such as his trademark "Succes" (Success) cake made with nougat cream and macaroons.
Born in the Normandy town of Saint-Nicolas-du-Bosc, Lenôtre liked to say he was "reared on butter and creme fraiche" and recall that after hesitating between training as a carpenter and a pastry chef, he finally chose desserts.
Cuisine was in his blood: his father was a chef at a upscale Paris hotel and his mother a private cook for the household of the baron Pereire, a wealthy French banker.
A cuisine professional who demanded the highest standards from his team, Lenôtre rejected mass production methods, even if 5,000 guests had to be served.
"French pastry-making taught me to be precise, to have discipline," he once said in an interview. "If I see that things are sloppily done, I lose it."
In 1960, he opened a catering service that would lay the foundation for an international food empire, with Lenôtre boutiques now open in 12 countries including the United States, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Thailand.
Lenôtre opened a pastry school in the Paris region in 1971 that welcomes some 3,000 chefs each year, and in 1976 took over Le Pre Catelan, a three-star restaurant and two other establishements.
"Gaston Lenôtre died at his home where he had retired in the early 1990s,"
"He was a tireless worker, passionate and curious, unyielding when it came to quality, who succeeded in preparing a solid new guard in the fields of patisserie and cuisine, to which he dedicated his entire life."
A father of three, Alain, Sylvie & Annie, Gaston Lenôtre is also the author of several books on French pastry and cuisine.
"I inherited the love of cooking and baking from my parents and grandparents. My grandmother Eleonore was among the first French woman chefs in the 1900's. She was the private executive chef for the baron Rothshild family at their residences in paris and Bordeaux. My grandfather, Gaston Lenôtre, was chef of the Grand Hotel. In the big city of Paris, when they discovered they were both from the same small village of Normandie, it was love and they married.
They had two boys, my father Gaston and my uncle Marcel.With my mother Colette, my father made the LeNotre name famous in Paris. They were no escape for the next generation of LeNotre's. Along with my sisters Sylvie and Annie, my wife Marie and I have continued the family tradition of fine cooking and baking and crated another culinary school."
Gaston Lenôtre Knows the Secret of the "Art de Vivre"
(Art of the Good Life)
My father Gaston Lenôtre, now 88, is admired as a living Antonin Caréme or as a modern Auguste Escoffier. He is certainly the world's most famous French Pastry Chef and caterer alive.
My grandmother, Eleonore, was one of the first women chef's in Paris during the 1900. She was the chef of the Rothschild family. My grandfather, Gaston, was also a talented chef who worked for the Grand Hotel in Paris.
In 1920, my father was born in Normandy, a province of plenty west of France, world famous for its Calvados Brandy, cheeses (including Camembert), the Mont Saint Michel monastery, and the landing beaches of the Battle of Normandy, As a patriarch, he liked to work with this family member, twelve of us at one time; including the third generation of the Lenôtre chef's, my cousin Patrick and myself.
In addition to his incredible taste and professional "Savoir Faire" he always made bold moves. Among his list of firsts are; the first chain of upscale bakeries in Paris, a bakery-café bistro in the first French shopping mall, the first central kitchen in the country outside of Paris, the first professional French re-training chef school, the first line of frozen desserts distributed all over France, and he developed the first International bakery franchises (now in a dozen countries including Germany, Japan, Hong Kong and Kuwait). My father wrote nine recipe books with my sister Sylvie that have been translated into English, German, and Japanese and have sold close to a million copies. He also was the official caterer of the World Soccer Cup in France in 1998 and of the French Olympic team in Sydney, Australia. He catered for Presidents, Kings and celebrities all over the world.
My father in now enjoying a well deserved retirement at his Hunting Ranch in the Loire Valley. My wife Marie, my son Gaston, and I visited him. Together we made apricot jam, watched the wild ducks on his lakes, picked mushroom chanterelles in the woods and cooked them for our dinner.
Thanks to him we know the true secret of "The Art de Vivre".
Alain Lenôtre
Marcel, Gaston (Alain's father)
with their parents,
Gaston and Eleonore Lenôtre
