Strasbourg (AFP)
Emile Jung, the former three-star chef at Au Crocodile restaurant in Strasbourg, died on Monday, the day of the announcement of the 2020 list of awards in the Michelin guide, we learned from his wife.
Emile Jung, 78, died of a long illness, she said, confirming information from the Latest News from Alsace (DNA).
After operating a restaurant in Masevaux in the Haut-Rhin for ten years, where he already had a Michelin star, the chef had moved to Strasbourg in 1971, where he had taken over the restaurant Au Crocodile with his wife Monique Jung , which takes its name from a stuffed crocodile, still in place in the restaurant.
Both former students of the Strasbourg hotel school, the Jung couple quickly obtained a first star, then a second in 1975. The consecration of the third star of the famous red guide will arrive in 1989, around dishes like pike-perch with sauerkraut and juniper berries or quail stuffed with foie gras.
Anxious to pass on his knowledge to young cooks, Emile Jung also regularly paid tribute to culinary tributes to writers, such as, for example, to Victor Hugo on the occasion of the bicentenary of his birth in 2002.
An institution of Strasbourg gastronomy, the Crocodile has retained its three Michelin stars for thirteen years, until 2002, becoming one of the most renowned tables in France. Emile Jung left the reins in 2009 to retire.
He was also honorary president of the association Sentiers d'étoiles, which, during the Christmas market in Strasbourg, sold soups for the benefit of associations, the recipes of which are made by chefs.
"Strasbourg loses one of its most beautiful stars. Thank you Emile for making us dream so many years", reacted on Twitter Robert Herrmann, president of the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg.
© 2020 AFP