Chef Michel Guerard is still evolving his art

If chefs could be heritage listed, 77-year-old Michel Guérard, one of France’s most decorated culinary masters, would lead global rankings.

Today, more than three decades after he first received three Michelin stars for his fine-dining restaurant at the thermal bath spa and hotel complex Les Prés d’Eugénie at Eugénie-les-Bains in southwest France, the spry Mr. Guérard is still reinventing his art.

“I never saw myself as a star,” he says. “I have chosen a field I adore and that offers many possibilities. As [the early 20th-century chef/philosopher Auguste] Escoffier explained more than a hundred years ago: cuisine like couture is one of these creative fields that involve exaggeration and insolence. But what is important is that cuisine evolves.”

Under his guidance, evolve it has. As the inventor of gastronomic slimming cuisine in the 1970s, and a driving force behind nouvelle cuisine—the radical break with traditional French cooking techniques that had relied on heavy sauces, copious quantities of butter and large servings—Mr. Guérard became, after his friend Paul Bocuse, among the first global Gallic celebrity chefs, most famous for his simple dishes such as creamed eggs in a scooped-out eggshell with caviar (as a first course at dinner). He is also renowned for his soft pillow or truffle “dumpling” of mousserons and morilles mushrooms with asparagus tips or chicken stuffed with herbs, mushrooms and fromage blanc.

Relais & Chateaux

A dessert created by Mr. Guerard

By reimagining the principles laid down by Fernand Point, the godfather of modern French cooking, the young provocateur landed the cover of Time magazine in 1976 and has since sold more than a million copies of his diet and gourmet cuisine recipe books.

A scientific cook before the age of molecular cuisine, Mr. Guérard selects his ingredients like a painter choosing color tubes. He was the first of the haute cuisine fraternity to devise frozen-food meals for conglomerates such as Nestlé, signing his first contract in 1976 with their mass-market label Findus.

And years before best-sellers such as Mireille Guiliano’s “French Women Don’t Get Fat” (2004), he was championing the importance of the pleasure of a little chocolate in every low-calorie diet. He is synonymous with the joy of desserts for dieters such as his delicious signature Paris-Brest concoction made with egg whites and a smattering of whipped cream (“It is the amount of cream that is the assassin,” he says).

“If we can no longer continue to invent and as a result find pleasure in our creativity, then we must ask why” —Chef Michel Guérard

“I believe that in the future cuisine, including fine cuisine, will be healthy or it will no longer exist,” he says, comparing a chef’s creativity to a poet or songwriter. “To invent is a game and it is really fun,” he says. “If we can no longer continue to invent and as a result find pleasure in our creativity then we must ask why.”

In April he published a new book of recipes (in French) with French TV chef Julie Andrieu called “How To Shine in the Kitchen Without Knowing How to Boil an Egg.” (Agnès Viénot Editions.)

Mr. Guérard is also the vice-president of a new Culinary College of France and is launching a national institute of “healthful cooking” in France to fight obesity and cancer by improving food served in public institutions such as schools.

But perhaps what he is busiest with these days is Les Prés d’Eugénie, the luxury spa, hotel and dining establishment he and his wife, Christine Guérard, opened in 1974. The couple say it offers guests a modern version of the Greco-Roman spa experience at the “Ferme Thermale d’Eugenie” and a constantly evolving slimming menu.

The spa was originally bought by Mrs. Guérard’s father, Adrien Barthélémy, in the 1960s. As heiress to the family spa business La Chaîne Thermale du Soleil, Mrs. Guérard, the company’s president, today runs more than 20 thermal bath stations throughout France.

The spa is located a 1.5-hour drive from Biarritz in Eugénie-les-Bains, a thermal springs station known for its therapeutic waters since the time of Henry IV in the 16th century. The village is named after Napoleon III’s wife, the Empress Eugénie, who made it fashionable when she frequented in the 1860s.

Located on 10 hectares, Les Prés d’Eugénie offers five different accommodation options decorated in 19th-century French colonial style. There are hotel rooms in the central palace, large apartments in separate mansions, vast suites, three restaurants, two thermal baths, beauty salon, gym, swimming pool and tennis courts, as well as extensive gardens laden with orange and lemon trees and roses.

In the past year, a new section to the hotel called L’Imperatrice or The Empress has opened as part of an ongoing expansion. The 120-square-meter Imperial Suite—which overlooks the main gardens and includes a large living room, dining room and white marble bathroom—starts at €770 a night. Cashmere throw rugs, Persian carpets, fresh roses and paintings from the empress’s era complement the comfortable French regency armchairs.

As for dining options, guests who come for a luxury-spa experience can choose between the slimming, gastronomic and country cuisine, sampling the fruits of his latest research with a team of scientists, nutritionists, and cookery teachers.

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The Wall Street Journal (10/1)