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.

How to find a bad restaurant

Right now, restaurants in London, Paris, and most big US cities are dark and dismal places, closed temporarily or unfortunately, often for good. Restaurant critics -- along with chefs, waiters, sommeliers, and so forth -- have had to find other work. The future might hold better luck for them and for us. Maybe we will be able to eat out again in the not-too-distant future, maybe even while traveling to England or France where I've definitely enjoyed many good meals. Meanwhile, I have books to read.

I decided to read the book Dishing it Out: In Search of the Restaurant Experience by Robert Appelbaum, published in 2011, because it had a chapter on Grimod De La Reynière, whom I've been trying to learn about. On the whole, Dishing it Out is dull, pretentious, and full of social science jargon, pedantic literary critics' jargon, superior-minded self-promotion,  and at the same time a strange sort of naivety. The chapter on Grimod wasn't great either. Nothing in the book is as clever as the title -- though several other books on amazon.com are also called Dishing it Out! 

Briefly: not a good book. Appelbaum's focus is how a variety of authors, beginning with Grimod, have written about food. He judges the works of professional restaurant critics through the ages, and also writes about recent amateur internet-published restaurant criticism. He analyzes novels like Sartre's Nausea and Isak Dinesen's Babette's Feast; journalism like that of Michael Pollan; statements of foodies like Alice Waters, and others. He loves words like "civilization" and "culture." Sorry, his insights are not very interesting. 

While Appelbaum denies that he's a restaurant critic, he does describe several experiences that he and his wife had trying to find good restaurants in London, Paris, and other French cities. Mostly, he complains because the combined food, service, and atmosphere never live up to his expectations. This is a bit tedious.

He does accomplish something: his method of picking out restaurants could be a lesson on how to eat badly in London and Paris and probably lots of other places. Here are a few of his documented approaches to ensuring that he will be disappointed:

• Go to a neighborhood in the chosen city where there might be good restaurants. Or maybe to a neighborhood that had good ones in the past and is now touristy, like Montmartre or the Left Bank in Paris. Wander around until you are becoming exhausted and your wife is complaining because her feet hurt. Finally choose a restaurant in desperation even though you don't think it will be great. It won't.
• Go to a restaurant with a good reputation, or at least a pretty good one. Order the cheap tourist menu. Make your wife order it too. It will turn out to be poor quality. As you suffer with each bite, watch the other diners in the restaurant -- they are locals who ordered à la carte, and who are enjoying truly delicious and well-prepared-looking dishes.
• Go to a restaurant that was famous at some time in the past. You might find out that it is now owned by a faceless corporation and it's no longer out-of-the ordinary. Just predictable. 
• Go to a restaurant in an ethnic community (say, Chinese or other Asian), but order the dishes that are intended for timid non-ethnic customers.  This is probably a route to disappointment anywhere, even in small US cities.
• Go to a very expensive and highly respected restaurant. You will have very high expectations but a lowish budget. Order your food carefully, but let the waiter manipulate you to order wine and extras that run up your tab to way past what you hoped to pay. You may have enjoyed the food, but you'll regret the experience.
• Pick a restaurant that has been decorated to look like it has a distinctive historical identity, for example, one that's based on the famous bouchons of Lyons, France. In Lyons or maybe even in Paris itself, there are still restaurants that preserve this tradition -- Appelbaum, however, goes to a fake bouchon in a completely inappropriate area that has completely different traditional restaurants. Try this: you might be lucky with the food. You might not. 
• Above all, don't follow the advice of guide books or mainstream restaurant critics because, as Appelbaum warns, they are inferior writers who deserve to be analyzed, not used as expert recommenders. Don't research reputations or current status of restaurants -- don't ask local friends where they eat -- don't do anything that would maybe get you a good meal that you could afford!

This snarky review is © 2021 by mae sander for maefood dot blogspot dot com.

Inventing Filter Coffee Makers

Silver “à la Belloy” coffee pot, which used the drip method.
Design registered in 1818 (photos from auction site).

The parts of the coffee maker, including a perforated basket for
the boiling water to drip through into the lower serving part.

Jean Baptiste, Count de Belloy (1709-1808) was archbishop of Paris from 1802 to 1808, appointed by Napoleon under an agreement with the Pope. De Belloy's most lasting accomplishment -- for posterity -- was inventing the drip, or filter, coffee maker, which he devised in 1800. Today, as most of us know, drip coffee is most often made using a paper filter rather than the multi-part drip coffee pot with a metal basket.  Before De Belloy's invention, coffee was made by infusing coffee grounds in boiling water (presumably like the current French Press) or by boiling the grounds in water (like today's Turkish coffee). 

Archbishop Belloy's invention is the ancestor of several popular coffee makers in recent use. 

1950s style drip coffee pot (like my mother's).
Same design as the Archbishop's original.

Melitta drip coffee, using a paper filter. Invented in 1908 by Melitta Benz,
who patented the paper filter and founded the Melitta company.
The photo shows my Melitta equipment, which I sometimes still use.

Chemex coffee makers from the Chemex website. The Chemex was invented in 1941

by Dr. Peter Schlumbohm. It was very popular in the 1950s and is still made.

Modern electric drip/filter coffee maker.

The very most recent filter coffee? 

The attribution of this invention to Archbishop de Belloy is mentioned in Grimod De La Reynière's  Almanach, as I learned in my recent reading (blog post here). Shortly afterwards, Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, the famous and prolific inventor, worked on a drip coffee pot as well as on a percolator, which uses a different method for making coffee. Another inventor, Parisian tinsmith Joseph-Henry-Marie Laurens, also worked on the percolator at around that time. 

An alternate history of the De Belloy drip coffee maker identifies a number of inventors, popularizers, and manufacturers who contributed to this innovation. A nephew of Archbishop De Belloy; the proprietor of a popular coffee shop in the Palais Royal; a pharmacist, chemist and inventor from Rouen named François-Antoine-Henri Descroizilles (1751-1825), and maybe a few more played a role in its invention. See the post "Elevator to Espresso" at The Black Blob Spot for a full exploration of this story. 

I suspect that both the drip coffee pot and the percolator were ideas whose time had come! Increased availability of coffee beans, popularity of coffee shops, developments in metal-working technology, the economic and social aftermath of the French Revolution, and other factors could all have contributed to a flourishing of inventors.

I'm sharing this bit of technological and culinary history with my friends at Elizabeth's weekly blog event celebrating all manner of beverages. 

The text of this post is © 2021 by mae sander, and if you read it elsewhere, it's been stolen!

Grimod de La Reynière, Food Critic

 

"Each volume of the Almanach des Gourmands contained, besides articles of interest to gourmands on the subject of different foods or furnishings for the table, some gourmand literature and a guide to the restaurants and food shops of the capital. In this last essential part of the work Alexandre-Laurent Grimod de La Reynière was the spiritual forefather of any modern reviewer from Egon Ronay to Messrs Gault and Millau." -- A Palate in Revolution: Grimod de La Reynière and the Almanach des Gourmands by Giles MacDonogh (p. 66).

Collaborating with a jury of food reviewers who were also his friends, Alexandre-Laurent Grimod de La Reynière judged the food of Paris and published reviews in his Almanach des Gourmands. The volumes of the Almanac  appeared from 1803 to 1812 in eight volumes. Grimod would solicit food sellers and restaurants to send samples so that the jury of his friends could taste and evaluate the dishes, which he would then write about. Each dish would be sampled separately -- in contrast to the way that aristocratic dinners at the time would load the table with dozens of dishes for each course. The creators of the foods were kept secret from the tasters, to help them with more objective assessment. Wouldn't this be a nice scheme for having catered dinner parties without money?

Gault & Millau, a respected restaurant guide, charges €348 for
a "Plaque Restaurant," available only to those recommended in the guide.
(Screenshot of the plaques and prices from their website)

Like Grimod, food reviewers still rely on a variety of money-making schemes. The publisher of the twenty-first century Gault & Millau guide sells plaques for recommended restaurants to display in their windows. So do dozens of other rating services worldwide, including the prestigious Michelin Guides. 

(Note: in case I was misunderstood, they do not pay for the recommendations in the guide, only for the plaques that they put on the window to advertise the recommendation.)

In the Napoleonic Empire era in Paris, restaurants as we know them were just being invented -- that is, restaurants where you could sit at your own table and order from a selection of dishes made to order by a chef. Grimod was the first food writer to offer restaurant recommendations, which he called a "legitimation." He was also the first critic to offer a testimonial to display:

"Any traiteur or restaurateur who had been granted a legitimation could, at a cost of 1.50 francs, obtain a signed and sealed document to that effect (extra copies came at 1.25 francs). The recipeient could then display the certificate in the window of his shop or restaurant." (p. 70) 

 Grimod de La Reynière was the first writer to do a lot of things, but somehow someone always came along shortly after him and did it better! He's not completely forgotten by history, but everything about him seems to be a pale shadow of what someone else did! 

• Brillat-Savarin and Grimod (who published first) are jointly credited with the creation of culinary essay-writing. Brillat-Savarin's treatise on food, The Physiology of Taste: Or, Transcendental Gastronomy, is much more famous than Grimod's work, and still in print in a number of editions in French, English, and other languages. Try to find a book by Grimod: the bulk of his works have never been translated into English. They are expensive and hard to find in French, though it's possible to get them from amazon.fr -- I'm afraid this is because they just aren't as interesting or readable as the works of Brillat-Savarin.
• Alexandre Dumas took up Grimod's project of a Grand Dictionary of Cuisine, and wrote a much better one. Grimod never finished his dictionary, but gave Dumas the idea. Let’s face it, Dumas was a more clever and imaginative writer!

Grimod belonged to an aristocratic and wildly rich family, who made huge amounts of money as tax farmers before the revolution. While his father's family had bought their way into the aristocracy, his mother was from a very ancient noble family (but of course rather poor by comparison). Because Grimod was born with a birth defect -- deformed hands -- his parents were very ashamed of him and sort of acted like he didn't exist, but he persisted. Grimod hated their pretensions and as a young man was very disrespectful of his elders. He gave parties at their palace that were irreverent and loony. To try to control their son, they used the famous method of a Lettre de Cachet to disinherit him and have him locked up or exiled. They also tried to declare him insane. It's a long complicated story that soon became entangled with the events of the French Revolution. Somehow, Grimod just sort of plodded onward until he was freed. 

During the French Revolution, Grimod escaped the Terror and did not face the dramatic fate of many similarly placed aristocrats. This was partly because of his exile, and partly because he wasn't fully credentialed as an aristocrat, thanks to his parents' embarrassment. Mostly, his escape from the Terror seems to have been by chance and luck -- not heroic or clever or full of suspense. He just wasn't in anyone's way! It may have been the best of times and the worst of times, as Dickens wrote, but for Grimod it was one day after another. While he had been unobtrusively exiled in the provinces, his had father lost all his money to a con man, and died a natural death. Even with everything against him, Grimod managed to get back their palace on the Champs-Élysées and subsequently live there in genteel near-poverty, eventually making a living as a kind of (let’s face it) hack writer.

A shop sign for the fine grocer Corcellet in Paris.
The man in the picture is said to be Grimod. 
This sign is now in the Carnavalet Museum in Paris.

Grimod loved the theater, and especially loved actresses. When he needed to make money after the Revolution, he became a theater critic, but his works were censored because he also included remarks about politics. What could he do? He started writing about food, especially the food on the menus of the new dining establishments. These newly emerging restaurants were serving high-end meals to non-aristocrats who had become rich during the upheavals of the revolution. It was at this point that he invented the food review, and founded the club for testing out the best the new restaurateurs had to offer.

Page from one of Grimod's books. (wikipedia)

My source for most of this information about Grimod's life comes from the book A Palate in Revolution: Grimode De La Reynière and the Almanach des Gourmands by Giles MacDonogh (published 1987). Grimod lived from 1758 to  1837 -- thus through the end of the French Old Regime, through the Revolution and the Napoleonic Era, and well into the next phase of French government. There's a lot of fascinating material in the book, but unfortunately the author treats it in a way that I would describe as very pedantic and often dull. Maybe it's appropriate, as Grimod himself seems to have always come close to being really innovative and interesting, but there was always someone moreso.

Let's end with a few bons mots from Grimod:

• "DIETS AND DIETING PEOPLE: Beware of people who don't eat; in general they are envious, foolish or nasty. Abstinence is an anti-social virtue." (p. 175)
• "KITCHENS: It is as difficult to put together a kitchen as to create a library." (p. 192)
• "THE REVOLUTION: Had the reign of the vandals lasted longer we should have lost even the recipe for chicken fricassée." (p. 205)
• "THREE THINGS TO AVOID: 'A little wine which I bought directly from the grower'... a dinner which is described as '...just among friends,' and amateur musicians." (p. 213)

Review © 2021 mae sander.

"Savoring the Past" by Barbara Ketcham Wheaton

Etienne Delaune, The Twelve Months, January, 1568

Savoring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789 by Barbara Ketcham Wheaton (pub. 1983) is a detailed and fascinating account of the development of French cuisine. The book describes court banquets, royal kitchens, lavish table settings, and luxury foods as well as French bourgeois cuisine, French cookbooks and literature about food, French restaurants, and more. I enjoyed reading the book, and I enjoyed the many historic illustrations of kitchens, cooking equipment, and other related images, such as the one at the beginning of this blog post.

Wheaton includes much general information, but also many delightful anecdotes and brief biographies of culinary personalities. Two such figures that I found particularly interesting were the seventeenth-century chef François Vatel and the 18th-19th century restaurant critic Grimod de La Reynière. Rather than a complete review of this excellent book, I'll just tell you about them.

François Vatel (1631–1671)

Vatel, one of the most renowned chefs of his era, is best remembered for the drama of his death. The simple version of this story, repeated in many works on cooks and cooking, is that he was preparing a banquet for a fête at Chantilly, and learned that his shipments of fresh seafood had failed to arrive. As a result, he would have nothing to serve his employer's guests. In a panic, he threw himself on his sword and died rather than face such shame. Wheaton quotes a letter from Madame de Sévigné:

"You may imagine the horrible disorder which such a terrible misfortune caused to the fête. Imagine that the fish arrived perhaps just as he died." (p. 145)

In reading Wheaton's account, I was delighted to learn that long before his iconic death, Vatel worked at the chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte near Paris. Vaux is a beautiful building in the midst of some of the most spectacular gardens I have ever seen.  Vatel worked there during the very brief time that Nicolas Fouquet, its original owner, was able to enjoy this magnificent property. Fouquet was a high financial official at the court of Louis XIV, which gave him access to a lot of money. He commissioned some of the finest architects and designers to create a magnificent chateau and garden, and hired Vatel to run his kitchen.

In 1661, Fouquet put on a lavish banquet at Vaux, organized by Vatel, and invited the king to attend.  (Unfortunately, Wheaton says, there is no record of the food that was served.) Fouquet's success inspired jealousy and plots against him, particularly from the well-known official Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a rival at court. The king had already been convinced by Fouquet's rivals that Fouquet was embezzling royal funds. He was sure that the riches on display at Vaux for all to see came from dishonest dealings. Fouquet was sentenced to life in prison where he soon died.

Wheaton writes:

"Out of the wreckage of Fouquet's establishment at Vaux-le-Vicomte much of the key personnel had been recruited to work at Versailles. But Vatel, the maitre d'hôtel, was not among them. It is believed that he left the country for a while. In 1669 he reappeared in the service of the prince de Condé as comptroller of the household at Chantilly. The following year, ... the prince invited the king and all the court to visit Chantilly for a three-day festival. Nine years had passed since Fouquet's ill-starred festival at Vaux. Was Vatel still haunted by the memory of it?" (p. 144)

The festival began with a feast to which an unexpected number of diners showed up, and not enough roasts were available, though the king's table was amply supplied. Vatel's reaction was "I have lost my honor." The next day, despite assurances from the prince that everything was fine, Vatel was frantic. The first shipment of seafood was inadequate, and he feared that no more were on the way. Tragedy! Thus ended the dramatic story of this famous culinary figure, remembered more for his death than for his life.

Alexandre-Balthazar--Laurent Grimod de La Reynière (1758-1837)

Almanach des Gourmands V. 2 (Wikipedia)

Question: Who wrote the first restaurant guide?
Answer: Grimod de La Reynière, who single-handedly developed many still-useful methods of reviewing restaurants and writing about food. The Almanach des Gourmands was the name of Grimod's highly original serial publication (1803-1812) that gave advice about choosing among the many newly opening restaurants in Paris. 

Wheaton offers a fascinating account of the quirky life of this writer. His parents were very rich: his father was the administrator of postal services, and his mother was "of higher rank than his father and exceedingly arrogant." They had a fine house on the Champs Elysées.  Grimod's education was in the field of law, but his interest was in theater, and he found rather unusual ways to express this interest.

In 1783, Grimod hosted a banquet at his parents' home that "achieved notoriety and at the same time a measure of revenge upon his parents." The black-bordered invitations to this event were in the form of funeral invitations. Like a modern rebellious kid, he got his parents out of the house for this party. Sixteen guests were seated at a table whose centerpiece was in the form of a catafalque (the support used for the coffin during a funeral service). In a balcony overlooking the dining room a number of invited spectators filed through to watch the event, which was a kind of parody of a court banquet. There were between nine and twenty formal courses consisting of many dishes. One included only dishes of pork, another dishes made with oil, all completely out-of-bounds in their level of disrespect for convention. At the end of the evening: actually at 3 AM, the guests tried to leave but found themselves locked in. Eventually, they left "bringing to an end a prime example of the dinner party as an act of aggression." (p. 227)

These irreverent theatrics continued after his father died and left him a large inheritance. These activities included running a food shop, writing theater reviews (and having affairs with actresses), and more. Wheaton's book includes only material about French cuisine until the Revolution, so it doesn't include his later and more famous accomplishment as a food writer and restaurant reviewer or the less dramatic end of his relatively long life.

Grimod's restaurant reviewing involved having restaurants and caterers send him food, which he sampled and judged with 12 friends. He wrote up his impressions in his Almanach des Gourmands, which appeared each year. At the time he began, in 1803, the institution of the restaurant as we now know it was just being invented in Paris, so he was really on the cutting edge! Later he published a book of advice for restaurants called Manual for Hosts. I'm frustrated because there are no easily available copies of these works, and no English translations. Eventually, when libraries are more accessible, I hope to see some of the original French editions.

Blog post © 2020 mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com.

An Old Guide to Paris

"Liberty, Equality, Gastronomy: Paris via a 19th-Century Guide" by Tony Perrottet describes a walk through Paris in search of restaurants and food shops of 200 years ago. His subject, Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent Grimod de la Reynière, wrote a series of guides called the Almanachs des Gourmands during the Napoleanic era. Grimod wrote of "delicatessens, pâtissiers and chocolatiers — including the first reviews of an alluring new institution called le restaurant." A slide show features an image (right) that has a chance of depicting Grimod along with several mouth-watering images of Perrottet's dining experiences.

Perrottet's article describes his recent week-long stay in Paris. He visited the Palais Royale -- back then, a gourmet hangout, now, not so much. He ate some meals in historic restaurants, and he searched for the former locations of no-longer existing food establishments.

Who was Grimod? His guidebooks, which appeared in 1805 and 1810, have never been translated into English, so he's little known to American foodies -- Perrottet explains:

Grimod wrote his guides at a pivotal culinary moment, when Paris was flush with money from Napoleon’s imperial conquests and establishing itself as the gourmet capital of Europe. Filled with celebrity chefs like Marie-Antoine Carême, who served in the royal kitchens of Alexander I of Russia and the future George IV of England and other notables while also writing several classic cookbooks, it was also incubating the new culture of the restaurant, named for the soups called “restaurants” (restoratives) that were initially the new dining places’ staple. Unlike the old inns and taverns where food of variable quality was laid out in a family-style buffet, restaurants offered patrons private tables and the chance to choose fine meals individually prepared. They became tourist attractions in themselves, vying with one another in their opulent décor and presenting Parisians with dozens of fresh and exciting dishes printed on menus the size of newspapers.

I was captivated by this article, which combines historic detail with enjoyable details of a modern visit to Paris. I haven't been there recently -- this makes me want to get back there. And while Grimod, as noted, doesn't figure in much popular food and travel writing, I've definitely heard of his books in reading more serious histories.

The article, available online, will be in next Sunday's New York Times travel section.