Cooking to die for

Good food may be important, but as a leading chef kills himself after suffering at the hands of the critics, has the cult surrounding the best restaurants reached dangerous levels?

"Bravo, GaultMillau, you've won; your verdict has cost a man's life." This is J'accuse! on a grand scale, the words of no less than the emperor of velvety veloutés himself, Paul Bocuse. The octogenarian chef points the finger firmly at the restaurant guide, alleging that the suicide of the much-loved chef Bernard Loiseau last week was a consequence of his restaurant losing points in this year's guide. Loiseau's colleagues and friends believe the lowered score was nothing more than an attempt by the guide to manipulate publicity and outshine its rival, the red Michelin Guide.

A heavy allegation, surely? Has Bocuse puréed his judgement along with his common sense? Loiseau still held his three precious Michelin stars, so a drop in favour with GaultMillau should not inflict a result like this. We are talking about meals; good ordinary human fuel – tummy ballast. Film and theatre critics are much nastier to Madonna and she has never reached for Guy's 12-bore. For years Victor Lewis-Smith has been begging Jeremy Clarkson to say his pieces to camera while driving round hairpin bends – but no joy there either. Criticism may be the difference between a career and no career but the body count should be low. Not so in France, where a career as a chef means life – until death.

There have been suicides over dropped ratings before, and one chef carried out an arson attack on his restaurant after losing a star. In Britain, chefs gain accolades, receive a dose of celebrity, then often hand back the stars when they find that maintaining standards in their perfect kitchen interferes with their new-found fun as culinary media darlings. In France, to be a starred chef is to live and breathe the job and what is more to stay up there. It is not uncommon for these guys to keep their stars for 30 years and then pass the overwhelming responsibility on to their sons. For a French chef, reputation is everything. Forget Teflon – adverse criticism sticks like eggs to a tin-lined pan.

The guides and gastronomy are forever entwined. One cannot exist without the other – or so we are led to believe. And these plump books with their thin paper, curious symbols and maps have actually shaped the style of restaurants, in terms of food and service, on both sides of the Channel. In France their standards sit easily with the age-old, deep-rooted traditions of French cuisine. In Britain, however, the Michelinisation of restaurants increasingly clashes with a burgeoning relaxed style of eating – devoid of French fripperies – that British food-lovers now call their own.

It tickles that Gordon Ramsay has banned his children from his own restaurants until they are 15, saying he does not want them to grow up as food snobs. Ramsay is a renowned chaser of Michelin stars – one of his establishments has the coveted three – and he runs his restaurants very much to the Michelin blueprint. Three Michelin stars spells grand surroundings, a huge wine list with great wines and an army of chefs and waiting staff to present perfect, precisely cooked food. Ramsay is right to keep the kids away from such places, but if I was him I'd extend the threshold beyond 15 and take them to a place where the élite snobbery of the guides does not leave its mark.

Ambitious chefs who want stars to their name must adhere to the blueprint of the guides. We do not have GaultMillau in Britain, but Michelin is known to make demands on restaurants that go beyond asking for technically brilliant cooking. These include investment in the wine list: one chef told me he had put half a million pounds into his wine cellar when he was chasing a third star. Restaurants are often advised that changes should be made to their kitchens with separate sections for perhaps cold fish or desserts. Some redecoration might be recommended to make the reception area more luxurious or the loos more glamorous; and a knock-'em-for-six flower arrangement costing more than the kitchen porter's weekly salary can also impress. "Every time we get an inspection there is an opportunity to consult," says a chef whose family-run restaurant appears in the guide but who does not have a star. "It is the same each time. The inspector comes, eats his lunch alone, then asks to see me. I greet them before making my excuses but at that moment there is an opportunity, for anyone who is inclined, to ask what you need to do to gain a star."

Restaurants and/or chefs have moved premises to get the third star. Albert Roux took his Chelsea Gavroche restaurant to Mayfair, and two stars became three. Marco Pierre White did a flit from Wandsworth (via Chelsea Harbour) to Knightsbridge, and three stars were his.

In two- or three-star restaurants you see a remarkably similar presentation of food. At the start of the meal there are amuse-gueules: not Franglais for making girls laugh but food for the myopic. If you have not come across one of these they are meal miniatures designed to show off the skill of the chef. Blink and you'd miss them, but they are usually followed by little espresso cups filled with frothy soup which the fashion-conscious chef will call a cappuccino of something or other. Your conversation must be interrupted so that the waiter can tell you, in excruciating detail, what is in them. And this is all pre the starter, pre the main course and pre the pre-dessert.

The guides love all this, but there is an independent band of chefs who believe it comes at the expense of good, honest cooking. "There is no doubt that it stifles creativity in food," says another un-starred chef, known for sourcing great ingredients and for his mastery of provincial cooking. He adds that starred restaurants do not address issues of increasing importance to customers. "Michelin-starred food has a tendency to be unseasonal, and little regard is paid to provenance."

Michelin has always denied that it consults with chefs about what it takes to become a three-star chef. The guide criticises by omission, it is always said. And it is true that the moment the three-star chef dreads most is opening the latest edition to discover that one of the little asterisks has evaporated. The guides say that if there is a standardisation of starred restaurants it is the copycat behaviour of the chefs that is to blame. Ergo Gordon Ramsay took a leaf out of the book of Marco and Nico, who had observed Albert Roux's style.

But in the past two years Michelin has acknowledged that the French style of fine dining is seen as out of touch in Britain. It has now awarded stars to the River Café, and to a few ethnic restaurants and pubs. But even the Asian restaurants, the last bastion of independent strength in the British restaurant scene, stick to criteria alien to their usual custom in order to please the inspectors. Zaika, an Indian restaurant awarded a star in 2001, "plates" the food rather than serve it in the typical communal way from small dishes in the centre of the table. The guides continue to wield their influence.

I do not wish to appear ungrateful to the Michelin Guide in Britain. It has undoubtedly pushed up the standard of cooking here since it arrived. But we have outgrown its influence, having developed a style of cooking we can call our own.

What is more, the guides remain exclusive. Good food is still not democratic in Britain, belonging only to those in the know, or who are at least prepared to part with the price of the guide Michelin. Snobbery obliterates the essential point of good eating by pompously serving over-dressed food in over-decorated surroundings; wholesomeness, generosity and quality are blurred by technique. A perfect guide would be one in which the goodness of the food stands alone, and the inspectors are not seduced by bourgeois absurdities for whom the customer must ultimately pay. The current system is highly contrived, fuelling an industry with the high cost paid to decorators, flower arrangers and all those extra staff needed to make amuse-gueules, cappuccinos of this and that, and petits fours upon petits fours.

British society does not need all this. All we want are the things we have been denied so long in his country: plates of good ingredients, sensitively handled and accurately cooked, that everyone can afford. The Michelin-GaultMillau standard was born in France, has existed for centuries and will always belong in that place where gastronomy is a matter of life and death.