The End Of Haute Cuisine?
The tragedy of Bernard Loiseau's suicide in 2003 (after learning he was to lose a Michelin star; in the end he kept it, albeit too late for poor M. Loiseau) caused many to question the efforts and money taken to reach the starry heights of Michelin recognition – are customers really driven to a restaurant because of the number of stars they have attained? Once upon a time, the answer was almost certainly yes, but M. Loiseau's tragic suicide resulted in many chefs both in France and here, including Nico Ladenis and Marco Pierre White, handing them back to Michelin, stating the stars no longer recognised kitchen skill, but rather then number of hand towels in the toilets and so on.
French cuisine needed to be at the top of its game – it was always seen as the innovator, the world leader in gastronomy – but in the last decade our palates have grown more and more adventurous and our gastro-boundaries have widened considerably. Now the acme of perfection might be sought in the purity and consistency of a sushi chef's rice or the humming notes of a Cambodian curry; reverence for a £500 dish of gold-plated quail has swung to praise for Alice Waters-inspired garden-fresh vegetables or Paul Heathcote's myriad ways with a black pudding. We seem, as gastronomes, to have become more 'bas' than 'haute' cuisine – an unexpected trend in times of plenty.
So do the French recognise this need for change? Even Pierre Koffman has said recently he won't be employing native French chefs in his newly-opened London restaurant – and he's old-school. Or have we moved too far away from the regimen of à la carte and into the sunny uplit pastures of grazing plates? Interestingly in France itself, there is a movement called Le Fooding which is leading a small but growing rebellion against traditional old-style restaurants, the so-called cachet of Michelin stars – they're even calling French cuisine a 'fossilised gastronomy.' They're embracing festivals, fusion (gasp) and everything non-French in a bid to bring attention back to what really matters – fine ingredients cooked well without hoopla for reasonable money.
Do you miss 'real' French cooking? Or do you find the whole tapas culture more congenial to eating out with friends? Do you feel the French still lead the way or have they lost their way trying to compete against the Spanish, the Italians, hell even the Vietnamese?
French food like their wine has had it's day. There is better and cheaper alternatives. For the French to re-establish their postion that need to moderinise their food make it less fussy and produce lighter wines especially the reds.