Bored appétit! When did French food get so dull?
As it’s snubbed on a list of the world’s top dishes, Debora Robertson laments the fall of French cuisine
What, how and where we eat has gone through a seismic change in the past couple of decades. Where once paella or lasagne would have been seen as quite the sophisticated statement, such dishes are now boringly mainstream freezer-cabinet staples.
If we needed any proof as to how adventurous we have become, along comes the just-released Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Eatlist, compiling the world’s top 500 culinary experiences chosen by writers, chefs, bloggers and Lonely Planet staff. Their aim was to evaluate the world’s great dishes in terms of the whole gastronomic shebang, taking into account not just taste, but cultural importance and location.
Top of the list: enjoying pintxós (the Basque version of tapas) in San Sebastián, Spain. The rest of the top 10 is a brisk global buffet of laksa, sushi, dim sum, bibimbap, with a bit of Texas brisket thrown in for the outdoorsy sorts, and smørrebrød in Copenhagen for the city break types.
But – quelle horreur! – France doesn’t even make the top 10. Since my first French lesson at age eight, I have been such a devoted Francophile that by rights there should probably be a statue of me in a square somewhere, possibly an annual parade.
But something bad has happened to French food in the past 20 years. There was a time when you could pull up in almost any French village and enjoy a simple and delicious three-course meal and a pichet of local wine without spending a fortune. Such places are now increasingly rare treasures, seldom discovered without the aid of a guide book or personal recommendation.
Even then, depressingly often I’ve shown up at such places with high hopes, only to be met with blobs
Something bad has happened to French food... it’s been hard to keep the faith
and dabs and foams that leave the inevitably rectangular plates looking like a Rorschach test for despair. The decline in French restaurants was such that in 2015, the government had to introduce a law requiring food made in the restaurant from scratch, to carry a “fait maison” label. So even for me, sometimes, it has been hard to keep the faith. I went to a cookery class a year or so ago and when one of my young classmates asked what kind of food I liked to cook at home, my “Vive la France!” reply left him looking at me with a combination of bewilderment and pity. Meanwhile, on this side of La Manche, everything in the dining room is, if not rosy, then dramatically improved. In the past couple of decades, we have shrugged off our cultural cringe about British cuisine. We will possibly soon be in a position where there are more farmers’ markets than farmers, we are more about provenance than Provence – even crisps are artisanal.
But, ever the optimist, I believe that change is in the air for French food. In the village I visit each summer, one of the most popular restaurants has no square plates, no stiff linen napkins, no blobs or foams.
It may be nestled against the walls of an 11th-century French church, but its tables are Formica, the chairs mismatched, and its chirpy waiters tattoo’d and lushly bearded. In fact, the whole joint would look quite at home in the corner of east London where I live. It’s always busy and lively and fun – in contrast to the much more formal place across the square. No, here, the Formica groans under big platters of local charcuterie and cheese, slowly braised casseroles, quickly grilled fish. In short, proper French food.
Finally, it is also the case that French restaurants in the UK are also shrugging off their stuffy, silver-domed image. In the past few years, we’ve seen a cheerful clutch that are more hip than haute, such as Alex Jackson’s Sardine, where he cooks southern French food over a wood fire, and the tiny and perfect brasserie Casse-croûte and its sister, Pique-nique.
With their onglet, souris d’agneau, jambon persille, tarte au citron and mousse au chocolat, they remind us of why we fell in love with French food in the first place.