French chef Alain Passard Bags Lifetime Achievement Award From World's 50 Best Restaurants

 

French chef Alain Passard, perhaps best known for having subverted the world of haute gastronomy by removing meat from his Michelin-starred restaurant Arpege more than a decade ago, has been named the 2016 recipient of Lifetime Achievement Award by organizers of The World's 50 Best Restaurants.

The win coincides handily with the 30th anniversary of his Paris restaurant Arpège, which has held onto its triple Michelin-starred standing for the last two decades and has become known as the pioneering restaurant for haute vegetarian cuisine.

In 2001, when mad cow disease was grabbing headlines, Passard generated headlines of his own in France when he announced that he would be removing red meat from his menu.

The decision was all the more surprising given that he'd carved out a reputation as a maitre rotisseur.

Over the last 15 years, humble veggies like beets and turnips, carrots and fennel have been given the culinary spotlight, promoted from side dish to main course. Beets are given the sushi treatment, crème brulée is reinvited using garlic, and spinach perfumed with a hazelnut butter.

He may not have known it then, but his vegetable-centric cooking philosophy would also go on to be adopted by some of the world's top chefs, including Alain Ducasse and René Redzepi, both of whom recently shifted their gastronomic focus to give more due to vegetables.

In 2014, Ducasse reopened his restaurant at the iconic Plaza Athénée in Paris with a meat-free menu, while Redzepi announced earlier this year that his next restaurant in Copenhagen will go vegetarian for part of the year

Originally from Brittany in northwest France,Alain Passard learned to cook from his grandmother and decided to become a chef at the age of 15, eventually rising through the ranks to helm one of the most sought-after dining destinations in Paris.

While Arpège is best known for its gastronomic wizardry with vegetables and legumes, the restaurant also serves fish and poultry.

Alain Passard joins Paul Bocuse, Alain Ducasse, Joel Robuchon, Juan Mari Arzak, Alice Waters, Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller in the canon of World's 50 Best Restaurants Lifetime Achievement winners.