Being a restaurant critic in France is a dangerous occupation. To be accepted as arbiters of taste, as were Henri Gault, who died on July 9th aged 70, and Christian Millau, with their Gault-Millau annual guide to restaurants, was thus a tremendous achievement.
It was all the greater because it came at a time when French eating habits seemed to be changing. No longer could it be suggested that an academie des gastronomes be created, or that while other nations nourished themselves, only the French knew how to eat. Such observations were hardly applicable to the French people of the 1960s, who were in a hurry to adopt new eating patterns and experience fast food - and were feeling the pressures of industrial catering.
It was therefore no accident that, in 1969, the first edition of the Gault et Millau monthly magazine appeared, followed in 1972 by the first volume of their guide. The need for such publications had become acute, and they were soon selling more than 150,000 copies a month.
In 1973, they published a manifesto, denouncing the decline of French cooking and proclaiming: "There are a million dishes to invent."
Born the son of a doctor in the Eure department, Henri Gault studied at the Lycee Carnot in Paris, then took a science degree at the Sorbonne.
As a freelance journalist, he specialised in reporting stories about food and the varieties of French cuisine, and broadcast accounts of his travels and his discoveries in cooking.
In 1960, while working for the evening paper Paris-Presse, he made the acquaintance of Millau, then editor of the page on which Henri Gault's culinary articles appeared, usually on a Friday evening. The paper's circulation increased on Fridays, and Henri Millau saw the commercial possibilities of writing about restaurants and cooking.
In 1963, a selection of the Paris-Presse articles was a great success. There were many reasons for the success of Gault- Millau. It was no accident that the publication appeared in the closing months of France's socalled 30 glorious years of prosperity, since the cult of restaurants assumed a public that was able to pay its way. The increase in the number of working women also had its effect on family cooking.
Henri Gault's great discovery was la nouvelle cuisine. Although he came to regret the invention of the phrase, it was undoubtedly a great success. The move was both a discovery and an incentive. The discovery was that there existed chefs who were tired of cooking traditional dishes and providing lengthy, heavy meals. Instead, they wanted a lightness of style in cooking, a freshness of materials, an insistence on quality rather than quantity.
The Gault-Millau guide, while informative about the dishes served, makes good reading because it adds interesting details (the restaurant in Cancale, for instance, is in a fine building where Leon Blum took a holiday before 1914). Unfortunately, Henri Gault did not get on well with Millau. Both were of the right politically, but it is said that Henri Gault was more extreme, being a sympathiser of the National Front. They split up in 1985, and Millau, with others, ran the guide by himself. Henri Gault continued to write, and last year produced an account of his travels in Europe.
He is survived by a son from his first marriage, and by his second wife, Catherine, their son and two daughters.
Henri Gault: born 1929; died, July 2000