Perfectionism, rethought

He was, I thought, the best chef in France. I was not alone. He had the top, three-star rating from Michelin, the only chef ever to win one, two and three stars in three consecutive years. He had the top, four-toque rating from Gault Millau (which called him, simply, le roi -- “the king”). Some critics called him “the chef of the century.”

Then, in 1996, Joel Robuchon, age 51, retired.

“I was working 20 hours a day,” he told me when we spoke recently, “and I just didn’t think I could maintain the same level of three-star quality, with all that pressure, every day once I was past 50.”

So, rather than lower his standards, Robuchon walked away. Now he’s back -- back in Paris, in Monaco, in Macao, in Tokyo and, next May, in Las Vegas.

It’s a very different Robuchon this time around, though. He’s no longer the hands-on, three-star perfectionist whose black truffle tart and gelee of caviar in a cream of cauliflower I can still taste. That Robuchon reveled in having the most expensive restaurant in France -- a temple of gastronomic luxury.

“But people don’t want to feel as if they’re going to church now when they go to a restaurant,” he says. “They still want very good food, but they also want to have a good time, in a more casual atmosphere, at more accessible prices.”

So when Robuchon came out of retirement in May of last year, he opened L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon, a Paris restaurant without tables or pretense, taking no reservations and serving mostly small portions. Other top chefs, in Paris and elsewhere, have opened bistros to appeal to a less demanding, less affluent, generally younger clientele, but to me, L’Atelier represents the most significant step yet away from traditional fine dining.

Inspired by tapas

L’Atelier -- literally, “the studio” or “the workshop” -- has two U-shaped counters that seat 37 people total, plus one smaller counter with four stools. The inspiration for this format came from Spain, where Robuchon has a home and where he came to “adore tapas bars,” and from Japan, where he’s been a partner in a Tokyo restaurant since 1994 and has become equally fond of sushi bars. “People become much more lively and expressive with the face-to-face contact between the clients and the chef,” he says. “There’s a real spirit of conviviality, and I wanted to try to transfer that spirit ... to a French restaurant.”

Parisians didn’t think much, though, of Robuchon’s refusal to take reservations, so he recently modified his policy. He now accepts reservations at 11:30 a.m. for lunch and at 6:30 p.m. for dinner. If you want to eat at any other time, you wait on line -- or (another recent change) you can leave your name and cellphone number, wander off and the staff will call you when stools are available.

Although a small selection of main courses range from about $30 to $55, most dishes are served as “small plates” at $8.50 to $25 each, and based on a meal I had there a few months ago, you could happily make a dinner of three or four of those, enjoy a true sampling of Robuchon’s brilliant cuisine and not spend $80 a person. Given the prices in Paris these days, that’s a virtual bargain.

Still, having eaten at Robuchon’s more serious restaurants a dozen times, starting in 1982 (when he had one Michelin star at Jamin), I missed his more elaborate dishes. I missed Robuchon too -- both at L’Atelier and, the next night, when we had dinner at La Table de Joel Robuchon, a more traditional restaurant, with a similar menu, that he took over in May. He’d been in the kitchen every time I ate in his earlier restaurants, and I now found his absence both unsettling and revealing.

Since opening L’Atelier in Paris, Robuchon has opened restaurants in several other cities, and he may now spend more time in airplanes than in kitchens. That’s a common experience these days, alas, for superstar chefs but virtually unheard of for Robuchon in his previous incarnation, when he was known for his omnipresent, detail-conscious approach to cooking.

Embracing change

But changing gears is not new to him. Although he enrolled in a theological seminary when he was 12, family financial problems forced him to leave three years later and then to abandon his second career choice -- architecture. So, having worked in the seminary kitchen, he started cooking in various restaurants.

In 1974, then 28, he became the chef at the sprawling Concorde LaFayette Hotel in Paris, where upwards of 3,000 dinners a night were not unusual. Four years later, he moved to the smaller Nikko Hotel, and in 1981, he took over Restaurant Jamin, where he served only 45 diners a night and quickly became the toughest reservation in a very tough town.

Doesn’t he miss this direct involvement and the total control he had then? He says he doesn’t miss the control -- indeed almost seems relieved to have surrendered it -- and he insists that he’s hired only “chefs who’ve worked with me before, people I see as trustworthy collaborators.”

I’ve talked to plenty of high-end chefs about the physical strain of being on your feet all day, every day, as well as the psychic stress of meeting three-star expectations every day, so I’m inclined to believe him. Besides, he doesn’t strike me as the sort who’s motivated primarily by money. And he still does cook.

“I go to each of my restaurants four or five times a year and cook for a week or so each time,” he says, and he’s pledged to do that in Vegas as well.

L’Atelier Las Vegas will be in the Mansion, a high-end, 29-villa hotel-within-a-hotel at the MGM Grand. The restaurant will have both a counter (with 25 seats, no reservations) and several tables (25 more seats, with reservations).

Why Vegas?

“I’ve had lots of offers to come to the States,” he says, “but I’ve seen what’s happened to some French chefs who went to the States, like Alain Ducasse,” who was savaged by critics when he opened in New York in 2000.

Robuchon wanted to “come in though the back door” in the U.S. So, Vegas, not New York -- or Los Angeles. But if Vegas is successful? “I’d like to have other restaurants in the United States.”

I’m not much of a fan of the chef-as-entrepreneur phenomenon. No matter how well they train their stand-ins, it’s not the same as having the master in the kitchen. Robuchon in one restaurant was unique. Robuchon with subordinate collaborators in six, eight, 10 restaurants is neither unique nor Robuchon. On the other hand, based on my meals at L’Atelier and La Table in Paris last summer, a Robuchon-trained collaborator is still better than 96.7% of the world’s chefs, so if he wants to open a L’Atelier in Los Angeles, I’ll be there, standing in line, the first day.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read previous “Matters of Taste” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-taste.