by Kathy Taylor

Created on: May 21, 2009   Last Updated: May 25, 2009

World's top Chefs

Cooking can be a skill, a learned trade, or an art. The world's top chefs are artists in their kitchens.

They spend years perfecting their skill. They toil long hours in search of perfection. They are up before dawn, visiting fish markets and vegetable purveyors, finding the best possible ingredients to nudge their culinary creations an edge above their competitors. They are both culinary historians and gourmet pioneers forging exciting new taste sensations. They influence our lives daily, in what we buy and eat as consumers.

They don't paint a masterpiece that hangs on your wall, or a song that you listen to over and over again. What is most remarkable is that what they are respected and lauded for is gone in a moment, a wonderful moment of sensory exhilaration that leaves only a memory. But it is by that gastronomic experience that they are judged. But with such fleeting criteria, here one moment, a delicious memory the next, how is that decided? Consistent excellence in gastronomy has its rewards. There are chefs who continually offer a high standard of culinary excellence, and who are rewarded with a rating by industry critics.

The Michelin Star was developed as a marketing tool by the Michelin tire family in the early 1900s in France. Three stars meant that the restaurant was worthy of a special trip, in itself a destination. A restaurant with two stars was worthy of a detour from your planned route, and a single star meant that it was worth a stop if it was on your way. (More tire wear and tear, more business for the Michelins.) As the brothers did then, the Michelin Guides today employ teams of inspectors who visit restaurants and bestow the highly coveted stars. It is a coup for a chef to receive one of these coveted stars, and a career disaster to lose one. Unfortunately, the Michelin stars belong to the restaurant, not the chef. In the case where the restaurant is chef-owned, this is not an issue, but sometimes, restaurants lose their star power when they lose a talented chef.

So how do we know who are the world's top chefs? Well, the Michelin is a pretty good indication. In the United States, Thomas Keller of French Laundry (*) in San Francisco has long been regarded a culinary genius. The owner of The Fat Duck in England, Chef Heston Blumenthal, is consistently regarded one of the world's top chefs (*, and 2001 Michelin Restaurant of the Year).

Chef Alain Ducasse had the honor of holding three stars in three different countries in 2006, an achievement hard to beat. Paul Bocuse (*), the architect of "nouvelle cuisine", the revolutionary change in French cooking, with its emphasis on lighter, fresher ingredients, is an icon in the culinary world.

Some chefs compete in culinary competitions. Every year, countries send teams of their best experienced chefs and their promising stars to the Bocuse d'Or prestigious international cooking competition presided over by none other than Paul Bocuse himself. The Bocuse d'Or is generally regarded as the Culinary Olympics. The 2009 Bocuse d'Or champion, from a competition that saw 24 top chefs from all over the world compete in Lyon, France this past January, is Geir Skeie of Norway.

Michelin stars and competitions aside, foodies generally concede that the world's top chef, who almost singlehandedly shifted the gastronomic centre of the world from France to Spain is Ferran Adria. Since 1983, Adria has been the inspiration and meticulous operation of El Bulli, which is also regarded the best restaurant in the world.

To Adria, Skeie, Bocuse, Keller, and all whose passion is reflected in their quest for excellence, you might say, "my compliments to the chef."

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