Corruption Probe Puts the Heat on France’s Top Chefs

Even before Friday, times were tough for the great French chefs. Recession and higher sales taxes had hit them hard, erasing many of the notoriously long waiting lists for tables at their restaurants. And chefs were still smarting from the 1996 Gault-Millau guide, which summarily demoted more than half of the top-ranked establishments.

The sharpest cut, though, came Friday, when it was revealed that chefs at 30 of the capital’s best restaurants and hotels, including those running the prestigious kitchens at the famous Tour d’Argent restaurant and the Hotel de Crillon, had been placed under investigation for “passive corruption.”

Their alleged crime: taking kickbacks from a fishmonger at the huge Rungis wholesale market, sometimes called “the belly of Paris.”

The amounts were not huge, ranging from $200 to $600 a month, which is about the cost of a meal for two at Tour d’Argent, the Left Bank eatery that offers luscious views of the Seine and a cuisine honored with three precious stars in the Michelin Guide.

Far more damaging was the mere suggestion that some of the best French chefs--les grandes toques--would select ingredients for the table based on what passed underneath the table.

A bribe, which the French quaintly call un pot de vin (a jug of wine), is one thing. But dinner ingredients, well, those are serious business.

In fact, France’s best restaurants routinely justify their sky-high prices by pointing to their careful, quality-at-any-price approach to finding the freshest and tastiest ingredients for their tables.

The inquiry was launched by Eric Halphen, a well-known prosecuting judge who has previously focused his anti-corruption probes on high-ranking politicians and business leaders. He placed the 30 chefs formally under investigation for accepting money from the fish supplier Scotfish, which also is being probed.

Those chefs, sources say, run many of Paris’ most respected restaurants. But Halphen publicly identified only three: Manuel Martinez at Tour d’Argent, Christian Constant at the two-star Hotel de Crillon, and Marcel le Faou, the recently retired chef for the government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Foreign Ministry’s lavish receptions, luncheons and dinners are renowned as some of the best cuisine in France. The ministry diplomatically explained that the chef exercised his “right to retire” last month, shortly after the investigation was launched.

A disgruntled former employee of Scotfish is said to have turned over a detailed accounts book that names names and counts cash. Halphen also found envelopes, some containing thousands of francs. The amounts, investigators say, corresponded to a percentage of fish orders, ranging from 3% to 10%, depending on the status of the chef.

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In addition, he believes that some chefs were allowed to take free fish for their personal use and, in exchange, offered the fish supplier’s employees free meals at their restaurants. Halphen also is said to be looking into the actions of wholesale suppliers of beef, poultry, dairy products and flowers.

Gilles-Jean Portejoie, an attorney for Constant, the Hotel de Crillon chef, told the Paris newspaper Le Monde that the money was nothing but a normal, “generally modest” Christmas bonus.

“This is a usual practice, and the money was distributed by the chef to kitchen workers,” he said.

But the allegations have worried plenty of folks in the culinary establishment, especially the owners of the gastronomic temples, where annual revenues average $600 million. Their primary concern is the threat to their image, which, as much as the chef’s culinary creations, allows them to charge upward of $120 a person for a meal.

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Pierre Leconte, director of Tour d’Argent, one of five Paris restaurants with three Michelin stars, defended his establishment’s reputation for quality but stopped short of denying any personal wrongdoing by his chef, Martinez.

“In no way can we accept that the image of Tour d’Argent be tarnished by this affair,” he said.

Leconte noted that the restaurant itself is not implicated in the allegations against Martinez, who has been in charge of the restaurant’s cuisine, including the pressed-duck specialty, for eight years.

“All I can confirm is that I monitor, every day, the quality and price of products that we buy,” Leconte said in an interview. “Never has the quality of our products been questioned, and we have never favored low prices to the detriment of quality.”

Leconte said the restaurant purchased only about a fourth of its daily fish requirements from Scotfish and bought the remainder directly from producers.

And Martinez, he added, is paid a “decent salary” that conforms to industry norms “developed to avoid this kind of thing.”

“Whatever happened,” Leconte added, “the quality of what we serve has not suffered.”

Joel Robuchon, who owns and runs the famed three-star Paris restaurant that carries his name, expressed surprise at the allegations against his colleagues.

It was common, when he started in the business 20 years ago, for chefs to boost their salaries with gifts from suppliers, he said. But he added that he believed the practice had ended with better salaries and tighter fiscal controls.

“It was something that helped chefs out because, in those days, their salaries were miserable,” Robuchon told France Info radio. “It’s possible there are still some of these agreements. I don’t know. Maybe the suppliers give them a bottle of wine or a small gift. Is that really corruption?”