When I spoke with Guy Savoy, he was chef of Restaurant Guy Savoy in Paris. His four and more decades behind the pass have produced one of the most decorated kitchens in France, and his restaurant was ranked the best in the world on La Liste 2025. Of all the chefs I interviewed for the book, he speaks in the longest historical register.
What Savoy speaks to is the relationship between a kitchen’s foundations and its evolution. He is clear that the rules underpinning the culinary arts are what allow creativity to flourish at all, and that those rules will outlast any one chef. He named two of them for me: the calling upon all five senses, and the magic of transformation, which he described as the very essence of cooking. His kitchen evolves on top of foundations he refuses to disturb. The foundations are the identity. The evolution is what keeps that identity alive across the decades.
“The rules that underpin the culinary arts are the foundations without which creativity cannot flourish” Guy Savoy, chef, Restaurant Guy Savoy, Paris
He also gave me the clearest account in the book of what a long career in the kitchen gives back. He reaches for rugby, his other lifelong love. The winning team, he learned, is the one that best combines the contrasting talents of its players. He now sees his own role as that of both captain and coach, putting the right people in the right positions and encouraging them to play their best. The pleasure of having built the brigade is, by the end of a long career, larger than the pleasure of any single dish.
In the book, Guy Savoy appears in Chapter 11, Staying True, where his observation anchors the argument that a kitchen can evolve daily and protect its identity at the same time, and in Chapter 13, The Long Game, where his rugby metaphor describes the leader’s reward and his foundational observation describes what a chef actually leaves behind: the disciplines of the craft, passed down to the people who come after.
“Today, I view my role as being similar to that of both a rugby captain and coach: my job is to put the right people in the right positions, and to encourage them to play their best.” Guy Savoy, chef, Restaurant Guy Savoy, Paris