French food critic Christian Millau, who whetted the world’s appetite for nouvelle cuisine, has died aged 88, his friends said on Monday. The journalist, who launched the famous Gault & Millau guide with his late colleague Henri Gault in 1969, helped launch the movement of young French chefs who developed lighter, more inventive and beautiful-looking dishes that changed restaurant menus forever. The guide’s director, Come de Cherisey, told AFP that Millau helped change food culture around the world and supported chefs who are now considered the best in the world. “He revolutionised the world of gastronomy by supporting chefs he discovered, such as Joel Robuchon and Michel Guerard. He was also close to Paul Bocuse and helped (officially) found nouvelle cuisine in 1973,” he added. Nouvelle cuisine – or “new cuisine” – was a reaction to the supposedly complicated and heavy sauces of classic French cuisine, which relied heavily on butter and cream. Instead, its proponents, led by Millau and Gault – who coined the term – advocated lighter meals and shorter, more health-conscious menus. Together, they devised the “10 Commandments” of nouvelle cuisine by summarising the styles of the young chefs they admired, such as Bocuse, Robuchon and Alain Senderens – “father” of celebrity chefs – they urged chefs to be more inventive both visually and in the ingredients used, and insisted on freshness and lightness. “These new commandments of nouvelle cuisine were a big bang at the time,” Cherisey stressed. “Everything was very traditional then – the sauces were heavy and the meats were gamey – and there wasn’t the same emphasis on the artistry of the chefs.” Millau is also credited with taking chefs out of their kitchens to help them explain their food – a process that led to the celebrity chefs who today make millions from book sales and television shows. “Gault and Millau brought the human aspect into restaurant guides for the first time,” said Marc Esquerre, the guide’s current editor. “They were a mediator between the public and the chefs, bringing these two worlds together,” he added. Gilles Pudlowski of the rival French Pudlo guide was among the first to pay tribute to Millau, who died at his Paris home on Saturday. “Christian Millau is not dead, he is eternal. Dear Christian, what would I be without you?” Bocuse said Gault first used the term nouvelle cuisine to describe dishes he and other young chefs prepared for the maiden flight of the Anglo-French supersonic airliner Concorde in 1969. That same year, Gault and Millau began publishing their quirky and informal reviews of French restaurants in a monthly magazine that soon became an annual guide. “Millau was the author” of the two and it was his style that gave the guide its personality, Esquerre said. The Gault & Millau guide is now considered the second most influential after Michelin and is published in 12 countries.