Michel Guerard - Chef of Small Portions

Many chefs from Ireland will mourn the passing of Michel Guerard, who has died aged 91.

The creator of Cuisine Minceur, he was one of a group of transformational chefs in the nouvelle cuisine movement, including Paul Bocuse, the brothers Troisgros, and his early mentor Jean Delaveyne of the Camélia restaurant in Bougival.

He had a select group of disciples in Ireland, notably Patrick Guilbaud, Declan Ryan of the Arbutus Restaurant in Cork and Michael Clifford of Whites on the Green.

His style of cooking gained wide acceptance in the 1970s. It broke away from classical culinary traditions in search of greater lightness, directness and invention.

His book La Grande Cuisine Minceur, published in 1976, first delivered his cookery to tables worldwide (more than a million copies sold, in 13 languages) even though the recipes were in fact calibrated for customers on a diet.

Although his early career boasted many successes, Guérard’s name will always be joined to that of Eugénie-les-Bains, the health spa in southwestern France where he began cooking in 1974 after his marriage to Christine Barthélémy, to whose family the resort belonged. It was there that he developed a range of dishes suitable for the recovery of good health; and where he established a restaurant of class serving imaginative food of the highest quality, around which grew up a positive village of collateral ventures including a bistro, cafes, cooking schools and hotels.

He followed up La Cuisine Minceur with the less body-conscious La Cuisine Gourmande in 1978.