The Chef Who's Won The Most Michelin Stars Isn't Gordon Ramsay

While celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has enough Michelin Stars to support his authority when he's yelling at failing restaurateurs on "Kitchen Nightmares," he isn't the top earner of the coveted designation. Ramsay has the third most Michelin Stars, the prestigious awards that signify consistently high standards, with 17 total throughout his career (French chef Alain Ducasse ranks second with 21 stars). The chef with the most Michelin Stars is Ramsay's mentor, the late French chef Joël Robuchon, with 31 accumulated before his death in 2018 at age 73.

Born in 1945 in Poitiers, France, Robuchon, the son of a bricklayer, initially considered going into the seminary. Instead, starting at 15, he worked his way up in the ranks of the French brigade culinary system. He opened his first restaurant at 36. This restaurant, Jamin, accomplished the rare feat of earning a Michelin Star in its first year. It became the first restaurant in history to earn three Michelin Stars in its first three years. Initially, this was enough — Robuchon's restaurant was considered the best in the world, and he retired in 1995, and went on to host a French cooking show. It wasn't until 2003 that he began a Michelin Star-earning spree, opening up restaurants across the world. His restaurants are still around today and collectively still hold 23 stars.

Joël Robuchon was known for continually striving for excellence. He believed every meal could be improved and the status quo needed to be challenged. At the time Robuchon was starting out, French food was stuck in a tradition of dishes that were heavy and rich. Robuchon helped start the "moderne" wave of cooking, believing diners no longer wanted heavy sauces. He didn't pretend that rich foods like truffles, foie gras, butter, and cream were out of fashion, but he served them with less intensely heavy sauces that were typical of the French restaurants around him.

Instead of layering high-maintenance ingredients to create complicated dishes, he believed in simple, authentic flavors. ”An apple should taste like an apple, lamb like lamb," he told the New York Times Magazine in 1983. In the pursuit of these fresh ingredients, he changed his menu with the seasons. With all his focus on freshness and lighter foods, Robuchon still understood the power of butter. His world-famous mashed potatoes, or, pommes purée, were known to push the limits of how much of the delicious fat could be incorporated into the dish, with his restaurants serving it at a 2:1 potato-to-butter ratio.