Gilles Pudlowski

Biography

Gilles Pudlowski came into the world on 15 November 1950 in Metz, Moselle, the child of Polish immigrants. His grandfather Józef Pudłowski worked as a labourer at Solvay and cast his vote for the Polish United Workers' Party. Both of his parents were born in Poland, his father in Łódź and his mother in Zamość. At nine years old, in 1959, he started actively practising Judaism.

The day after the events of May 68, he signed up with the New Socialist Party. After finishing his studies at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and earning a history degree, he began his career at Le Quotidien de Paris, a paper founded by Philippe Tesson, and later moved to Les Nouvelles littéraires. When Jean-François Kahn took over that magazine, he put Pudlowski in charge of the literary pages and also asked him to handle the gastronomic column.

Christian Millau noticed him in 1979 and brought him on board at Gault Millau, promising a career built on tough criticism with the line: "In this job, people know how to eat or write, rarely both, sometimes none of the two. If you can do both, you're sure to succeed." He went on to write for Paris Match, Cuisine et Vins de France, where he invented the "plate" system—giving one to three plates to good restaurants, a pot for good value, and a broken plate for disappointing tables, earning him the nickname "the Zorro of the critique." His byline also appeared in Panorama du Médecin, Parcours, Le Figaro, Cuisine TV, France Inter, Bon Voyage, and Air France Madame. He became well known for his work at Le Point, where he served as the official columnist from 1986 to 2014, working as a senior reporter covering tourism and gastronomy while also contributing to the literary section.

From 1990 to 2016, he wrote a weekly column for Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace, and from 1992 to 2015 for Le Républicain lorrain, reflecting his Lorrain birth but Alsatian heart. For Saveurs and Cuisine et Vins de France, he produced major reports on French regions and portraits of chefs across Europe and the world. He also wrote for François Cérésa's Service Littéraire. Since 2016, he has sat on the jury for the prix du premier roman.

Did You Know?

• Gilles Pudlowski's grandfather, Józef Pudłowski, was a laborer at Solvay and voted for the Polish United Workers' Party.
• His Pudlo Paris and Pudlo France guides have been published in New York by the Little Book Room, an editorial emanation of The New York Review of Books.