Many blamed the Gault Millau Restaurant Guide. Published since 1972, the guide's cutting-edge criticism has made it the chief competitor to Michelin. A week before the chef killed himself, the guide had reduced its rating for La Cote d'Or, Loiseau's restaurant, from 19 to 17 points out of 20.

A short history: Loiseau's restaurant, which is in an old building in Burgundy, first earned a three-star rating from Michelin in 1991. The restaurant, which had been struggling, became full night after night. With the halo provided by Michelin, Loiseau was able to borrow money to turn La Cote d'Or into a luxury restaurant and hotel. In 2001, the president of France awarded him the National Order of Merit medal.

Loiseau always personally trained his staff: On one occasion a dish that seemed flawless was put in front of him for his final inspection. Some 25 cooks stood waiting for the verdict. His eyebrow arched at the sight of a single speck of misplaced sauce. "My poor friend," he said to the sous chef, "this is not worth three stars!" And whenever a guest prepared to leave, Loiseau would stand in the vestibule and ask, "How was everything?" With a wide smile on his face, his eyes would scan the dining room, always looking for the slightest imperfection.

In France, a leisurely nation which until recently had a workweek of only 35 hours, most of the best restaurants are closed on the weekend. But La Cote d'Or was open 364 days a year, closing only for Christmas. With his wife Dominique's help, Loiseau also bought three restaurants in Paris, and he signed a contract with a company marketing prepared meals, so that busy working people could also enjoy good food. He published eight books (which were also put on tape) that won several book prizes and were regarded as great works of gastronomic literature, and he frequently appeared on magazine covers, on television shows, and at awards ceremonies for cooking prizes. Consequently, the chairman of Michelin once warned him: "If you want to keep your three stars, don't spread yourself too thin."

In 2003, during the month before Michelin was to announce its ratings, there was great tension among the restaurant staff as they awaited the new rankings. Michelin did award the restaurant three stars, but it warned Loiseau to innovate more. A few days later Gault Millau came out. Knocking two points off its previous rating of the restaurant, the guide sniped that his cuisine was "hardly dazzling, just simply very well carried out."

Loiseau, who was described as "living for the praise of food critics," vented his anguish on the day before he committed suicide during a phone call with Paul Bocuse, a three-star chef himself and a great champion of "nouvelle cuisine." To reporters, Bocuse angrily likened food critics to court eunuchs: "They understand how it's done, but they can't do it." He added: "I always told him the problem with being at the top is that you can fall. I felt that pressure at age 40, at age 50, at age 60, at age 70. Now at 80, I'm better able to deal with it."

In face of these attacks from chefs, Francois Simon, a famous food critic with Le Figaro, argues that French critics are too soft. It is wrong to treat the three-star chefs as "untouchable and under such economic pressure that we can't question their talent," he argues. Simon, who is about 40 and famous for his acidic notices, was supposedly the inspiration for the critic Anton Ego in the animated film Ratatouille.

Who can truly know what the great chef was thinking before he died? On the night of his death, the restaurant staff determinedly went to work, quietly serving customers despite the tragedy. They promised to open the restaurant the next day, but then had to close as they grew overcome with grief.

Everyone agreed that this three-star chef had worked himself to death. "Journalists don't realize the weight of their words," said Stephanie Gaitey, Loiseau's assistant.

The American journalist William Echikson, who wrote Burgundy Stars after staying at La Cote d'Or for a year, takes a more even-handed view. It is only because of the Michelin guide that a chef like Loiseau, who came from a working-class background, could climb from the bottom to the top, he has argued. And it was only because of Michelin that tourists from around the world made the pilgrimage to his restaurant. Consequently, it's worth considering that perhaps it's not that critics have too much power, but rather that "France's rigid social structure has trouble digesting competition without suffering a nervous breakdown," as Echikson puts it.