So the loss of two GaultMillau points at his flagship Cote d'Or restaurant in Saulieu, Burgundy, would certainly have worried him financially. Perhaps more important, though, was the psychological blow. Chef after chef has queued up since Loiseau's death to denounce the cruelty of a system that toys with reputations, careers and lives for reasons that are at best opaque and at worse thoroughly arbitrary.
"It's terrible," said Guy Martin, chef at the three-star Grand Vefour in Paris. "They tell you you're one of the very best and then, overnight, they tell you you're not. Why? What have you done? How can the skills you've developed, the creativity you've nurtured, the time and energy you've invested, disappear from one day to the next?"
For men who see themselves as both artists and craftsmen, being subject to such cold, impersonal and pitiless verdicts - all too often based on factors such as a guide's desire not to give too many stars to one region of France, punish a chef thought to be getting to big for his boots, or reward a promising youngster in a culinary desert - can be almost unbearable. link
For all this boo-hooing, I don't believe it occurred to any of the chefs that maybe the downgrading of Loiseau's rating was deserved. Heaven forbid anyone get the grade he deserves, self-esteem being more important than anything.
"It's not one point or one star less that kills," he said. "This was a great chef who most certainly had other worries. In 2000 he said that if he went from 19 to 17 points he'd relish the challenge of returning to the peak."
It seems possible that rather than rating the food based on the food, they may have wanted to see what would happen if they did drop his rating from 19 to 17.