The sight of Gwendal Poullennec is liable to send restaurant kitchens into a fluster. Tall, neatly bearded, and wearing a slim-fit suit and tie, he is, at the age of 44, the international director of the Michelin Guide. I met him at Les Bains, a former nightclub recently turned into a boutique hotel in Paris’s Marais district.
To give some idea of Poullennec’s power, it helps to know about a phone call that happened in March of this year between him and Guy Savoy, a chef long lauded as the world’s best.
