(FORTUNE Magazine) – As a general rule, entrepreneurs don't have much in common. Some drive pickup trucks, others Maseratis. Some treat their employees like kin, others like kindling. But all are alike in an important way: They are perfectionists. Obsessed with particulars, the best of the lot will nail down their businesses to three decimal points even if it means working 80-hour weeks and sacrificing what used to be a life. God and Mammon, it seems, are in the details.

In the entrepreneurial world, no one strives for infallibility like French chefs. Many of them entrepreneur owners of inns and restaurants, they cater to a market consisting of the planet's meanest and most persnickety customers. Armed with razor-sharp palates and wagging tongues, food critics, politicians, and glitterati from all over the world flock to French eateries. Even when they love the chow, these customers from hell are quick to denounce it in public if they aren't 100% pleased. And the most feared diners of all are the humorless and often anonymous agents of Guide Michelin, whose rarely bestowed three-star rating (there are only 20 such restaurants in France) is the most coveted award in cuisine.

How an obsessive chef-entrepreneur met the challenges of this hypercritical market--and won three stars in 1991--is the subject of a new book, Burgundy Stars, by William Echikson (a former FORTUNE writer). Echikson lived in Burgundy for a year to chronicle the rise of Bernard Loiseau, master chef and owner of La Cote d'Or, a restaurant in the village of Saulieu. His pursuit of three stars holds as many lessons about business as it does about cooking.

From the start, Loiseau never stopped pursuing perfection, but if it cost too much when he found it, he compromised. When an American restaurant critic called his cheese tray "embarrassing," he began an exhaustive search for great cheeses, dropping a supplier who was one of the most respected makers of fromage in France. Loiseau gambled on getting his supplies from small, local manufacturers, including a divorced mother who dropped out of teaching in the big city and retired to a two-room shack in the hills to make the perfect goat cheese. Shades of American hippiedom.

The goat cheese was a ripe success, but when Loiseau tried to replace the Greek company that furnished frog legs with a domestic producer offering tastier gams, a Burgundian showed up with a trunkful of live frogs that escaped into the crannies of the kitchen. It took the staff hours to capture, kill, and clean the rascals, and Loiseau decided les grenouilles weren't worth the effort.

Loiseau also made sure he found workers who were as perfectionistic as he was. When building up his restaurant, he would go through hundreds of job applicants until he found people whose sense of excellence he could live with. For example, his wine steward, Lyonel Leconte, stored volumes of wine books in his living room. As one of his colleagues put it: "Lyonel has a one- track mind: wine, wine, and wine." At a sommeliers' contest, Leconte stood before a crowd of 500 connoisseurs. About 50 full glasses were placed before him. He had to taste each one and identify the vintage. He did, and was named France's best young sommelier.

Finally, Loiseau recognized that three stars requires "more than just cooking." Indeed, cooking may be only half the game. He sought perfection in countless details that lesser entrepreneurs might have called unimportant. At times he would stand at the door of the kitchen and examine each plate on its way to the dining room, and send any back if he spotted even one drop of sauce out of place. Since pesticides had decimated the wild snail population of France, Loiseau helped to finance a local entrepreneur who started a snail farm, and then he organized a local festival to publicize and support local produce, from vegetables to fish to jams and jellies.

Loiseau earned his third star in the 11th year of his ownership, just after he completed a $3 million renovation of La Cote d'Or. When the director of the Michelin guide called Loiseau to give him the good news, he said, "Don't think your renovation helped. We had already decided to give you the star." But, Echikson writes, Loiseau didn't believe him. It is characteristic of the perfectionist that the task at hand, or the one just completed, is the most important task of all.