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our chef 444
30/04/2025
Despite this, the first half of the 20th century marked the beginning of gastronomic tourism. The Michelin Guide and its star system appeared, first in France, and then in other European countries. This helped to promote and legitimise top chefs. Later, in the 1950s, television brought them to the attention of an even wider audience, thanks to culinary programmes. Raymond Oliver in France and Fanny Cradock in the UK were the first to host a long series of television programmes that raised the profile of chefs and catapulted the best among them to stardom.
Later, chefs such as like Joël Robuchon in France and Mary Barry in the UK then skilfully used media such as television and radio or published recipe books to raise their public profile. From this period onwards, many of them also teamed up with industrial brands for advertising purposes.
Over the years, the greatest of them – such as Paul Bocuse and Alain Ducasse in France, Gordon Ramsay or Heston Blumenthal in the UK – have managed to turn their reputations into empires. In addition to their own restaurants, they acquired brasseries, opened restaurants abroad, set up training institutes and published their own gastronomic magazines.