By Jennifer Eschrich
On February 1 the culinary world was shocked with the loss of one of its stars, chef Benoit Violier, in an apparent suicide. Violier was the executive chef of Restaurant de l’Hotel de Ville, which had been given three Michelin stars (the highest honor Michelin grants), and was recently designated by La Liste as the best restaurant in the world. The recent tragedy has brought attention back to the issue of mental health in the restaurant business. The long hours, pressure to perform at perfection level, and lifestyles of many chefs (including drug and alcohol use), make the restaurant life a breeding ground for mental illness that is ignored because of the “toughness” that is expected from its workers. A reoccurring comment in this growing conversation is how, in the age of blogs and Yelp, people are so quick to critique the food they eat without realizing the amount of work that the person behind the food put into it. So here are a couple of stories about the chefs behind the food:
Tantor Media 