Guy Savoy becomes first chef inducted into Académie des Beaux-Arts

Guy Savoy entered the Académie des Beaux-Arts as more than a celebrated chef: he became the first cook ever to take a seat in the institution’s more than 200-year history, a formal acknowledgment that French gastronomy now stands alongside painting, sculpture, architecture, music and the rest of the academy’s artistic canon.

He was installed on May 20 under the dome of the Institut de France in Paris, after being elected on November 13, 2024 to seat V in the section of members libres, the post once held by collector and philanthropist Michel David-Weill, who died in 2022. The academy said the choice recognized Savoy not only as one of France’s leading culinary figures, but also as an art lover and humanist whose work helped secure UNESCO recognition of the French gastronomic meal in 2010. Laurent Petitgirard, the academy’s permanent secretary, said Savoy’s election also reflected his long ties with artists and his contribution to France’s international reputation.

The ceremony carried obvious symbolism for an institution that has previously welcomed figures such as Baron Haussmann, Marcel Marceau, Pierre Cardin and Maurice Béjart into its members libres section. Petitgirard joked that it had taken “200 years of dieting” for the academy to elect Savoy, and Savoy answered that it was a “pantagruélique honour.” Guests included pastry chef Pierre Hermé, singer Julien Clerc and Brad Lewis, the producer of Ratatouille, a film whose fictional restaurant Chez Gusteau was reportedly inspired in part by Savoy’s cooking.

Savoy’s rise gives that recognition a sharply personal edge. Born in Nevers on July 24, 1953, he moved with his family to Bourgoin-Jallieu in Isère in 1955, where his father was a gardener and his mother ran a small eatery that grew into a restaurant. He trained with the Troisgros brothers, opened his first Paris restaurant on Rue Duret in 1980 at age 27, and won his first Michelin star in 1981, followed by a second in 1985. His restaurant at the Monnaie de Paris held three Michelin stars from 2002 until 2023, when Michelin downgraded it to two stars as part of roughly 20 French downgrades that year. Even so, La Liste named Restaurant Guy Savoy the Best Restaurant in the World for a ninth consecutive year in 2026, underscoring how the academy’s honor landed as both rehabilitation and elevation, placing haute cuisine firmly within France’s national artistic identity.