Talking and writing about French Food

French Gastronomy: The History and Geography of a Passion (published 2002) is a book about the development of a concept: Gastronomy. The author Jean-Robert Pitte is a much-published academic in France, but little known here. Of his many books, only this and one other seem to have been translated into English. He writes with authority and certainty, beginning with a question: how did the French develop the best cuisine in the world? He expresses no doubts about this: the French are incontrovertibly the best, and all that’s left for him to do is ask what made it so. (I’m not questioning this, just stating the premise of the book. French food probably is the best, but I suspect that there’s room for discussion.)

Update: I had no information about the author of this book, but my friend the blogger Kwarkito informed me in a comment that Pitte is “one of the most reactionary figures in the academic french world. He has consistently supported the most unfair and unequal reforms. He is also a climate sceptic, a proven one, in short, from my point of view, a notorious moron despite his academic titles. Besides, this obstinacy to consider that French cuisine is the best in the world is ridiculous. Here again, culinary nationalism in the XXIst century is an obvious lack of discernment.” So, dear readers, please read the rest of my post while being aware that I did not know any of this.

The early chapters of French Gastronomy are fairly interesting. However, I didn’t learn much new history in Pitte’s coverage of the development and appreciation of cuisine at court, the emergence of regional excellence in farm products, and eventually the development of the institution of the restaurant at the end of the Old Regime. In part restaurant culture was due to the destruction of the nobility by the Revolution, but not entirely caused by it. “One Revolution can hide another,” he writes: “Destroying statues or guillotining the royal family did not stand in the way of enjoying truffles; on the contrary, it was a people’s victory.” (p 118)

With the invention of the restaurant and its embrace of high cuisine for a wider and more diverse audience came the invention of restaurant criticism and thus came gastronomy. Here’s where things get more interesting, though much of Pitte’s history is rather familiar. At this point, writing about food became part of French food culture: chefs and theorists of gastronomy began to work together — and in Pitte’s view, this continued the creation of unique French cuisine, the best in the world. In fact, he seems to be saying that the excellence of French food is due not just to fine materials and techniques, but to the fact that they talked and wrote about it.

The first restaurant critic was Grimod de La Reynière. He began writing at the end of the Revolution, as restaurants in the modern sense were founded — Grimod is a fascinating character that I’ve read and blogged about several times. Pitte doesn’t have that much new to say about him, but nevertheless, I enjoyed his presentation of how restaurant food in all its forms and food criticism, also in various forms, developed together throughout the 19th century and much of the 20th century. He talks about the usual inventors and promoters, from Carême through Ritz and Escoffier, then Curnonsky, and more — to me mainly familiar from many other food historians as well as through reading their own works.

At the end of the 1960s another very famous food revolution took place. Pitte writes: “At the origin of nouvelle cuisine we find a few chefs determined to become famous and two imaginative journalists, Henri Gault and Christian Millau.” Millau was the writer, Gault the editor, who “wanted to leave the beaten paths and wrote with a brisk, even impertinent style. He won immediate success and managed to pack restaurants that had been totally unknown before.” The Gault-Millau guidebooks and other publications went hand in hand with the recognition of the most famous nouvelle cuisine chefs. (p. 144) 

Again, Pitte tells a familiar story with a few added insights into how food writers and culinary creators teamed up to create something big in French cuisine and in this case in worldwide cuisine, especially through interaction with Japanese chefs and food ways. And again, while I enjoyed reading Pitte’s presentation, I was left with a feeling that there is simply not enough here that I have not read before. I expected a more daring and insightful read when I decided to read this book. 

Here’s what I think: The French probably have had the best cuisine in the world, or at least in Europe. But they do not have the best food writers.

The start of a classic French meal that we ate in Avignon in 2016.

OK: Now to watch the just-made-available Great British Baking Show from 2022!!!

Maybe not the best food -- definitely the best TV Baking Show.

Review © 2022 mae sander.