The restaurant of famed French chef Paul Bocuse, who died almost two years ago, has lost the coveted Michelin three-star rating it had held since 1965, the guide said on Friday.

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The Michelin Guide told AFP the quality of L'Auberge du Pont de Collonge in Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or near Lyon, near Lyon, “remained excellent but no longer at the level of three stars”.

The restaurant, in France’s food-obsessed southeast, will have two stars in the 2020 edition.

The guide’s boss, Gwendal Poullennec, visited the restaurant on Thursday to deliver the news, spokeswoman Elisabeth Boucher-Anselin said.

The chef’s Bocuse d’Or organisation greeted the news with “sadness”.

Le mythique restaurant Paul Bocuse perd sa troisième étoile au guide Michelin, selon les organisateurs du concours Bocuse d’Or #AFP pic.twitter.com/M8wzLc3Wm0 — Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) January 17, 2020

GL events, which organises the prestigious Bocuse d’Or international cooking competition, “wishes to provide its unwavering support to ‘Maison Bocuse’”, it said in a statement.

Affectionately known as "Monsieur Paul", Bocuse, one of the most celebrated French chefs of all time, died aged 91 on January 20, 2018, after suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

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“Although we are overwhelmed by the inspectors’ decision, there is one thing that we hope never to lose and that is the soul of Monsieur Paul,” the Bocuse family and the restaurant said in a statement on Friday.

The communiqué touts a recent revamp of the restaurant, unveiled in October, suggesting the updated concept may have come too late to be taken into account before the 2020 Michelin Guide went to print. The restaurant, currently closed and under renovation, will reopen on January 24.

THIS IS FRANCE: Forget the strikes, the flu epidemic, the misery of mid-January, the climate scare ... main headline in France this morning: late chef Paul Bocuse restaurant lost one of its three Michelin stars... #France #Bocuse NB: Bocuse was the God of all chefs https://t.co/sCiwJXhFXu — Geraldine Amiel (@GeraldineAmiel) January 17, 2020

Dubbed the “pope” of French cuisine, Bocuse helped shake up the food world in the 1970s with the lighter fare of the Nouvelle Cuisine revolution and essentially created the idea of the celebrity chef.

Bocuse’s restaurant was the only one in France to keep a three-star rating for more than four decades.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

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