Michael Steinberger | The Rambling Epicure

Is haute cuisine still relevant?

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, November 18, 2015 Permalink 0

Is French cuisine dead? Not even close.

Is haute cuisine still relevant? Yes. What’s happening with it and does it still matter?

In 2009, Michael Steinberger, in his book Au Revoir to All That, declared that the ostensible decline of Michelin-starred restaurants mirrors the decline of France. While it is true that French cuisine, in particular the haute cuisine of the gastronomic palaces, may be threatened by high overheads and a weak economy, it would be wrong and premature to announce its demise. Profit margins are slim in high-end, labor-intensive restaurants, and labor laws are strict. The over-indulgence of the grandes tables of the past with their thousands of bottles of ancient claret in the cellar has been compromised by taxes on stock and thirty-nine hour work weeks that simply don’t work in the restaurant business, even if it’s four hours more than in other sectors.

Despite all that, French cuisine is still alive and kicking, and the number of Michelin star restaurants increases every year: today France has 26 three-star restaurants, four more than in 2000, and 80 two-star restaurants, ten more than in 2000, according to the Financial Times. In 2015, there are 25 per cent more one-star restaurants. These palaces remain quintessentially French in their food, service and organization. Simplified versions of these chefs’ dishes are published in cooking magazines and imitated in millions of homes around France, making it relevant even in middle class households. French families may not eat in such establishments often, but they will save and go to them once a year for a special occasion. This French devotion to their food traditions will ensure its survival.

Food News: The Rambling Epicure and iTaste are teaming up

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, March 11, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

The new Michelin guide for France came out last week and has caused much stir in the restaurant world. Many think the old-fashioned European restaurant guides such as GaultMillau and Michelin — once had-to-haves for any restaurant lover — are antiquated and stagnant and can’t keep up with our changing times, that they are ancien régime, dinosaurs of times past.

This may well be. While restaurants come and go, some restaurant goers continue to yearn for the traditional cooking of the past, insisting that today’s young chefs don’t even know all the basic techniques of Cuisine, with a capital “C.” In 2010, UNESCO declared that the French gastronomic meal is part of French cultural heritage, defining specific rules and social occasions for partaking of it, as if it were a species in danger of extinction.

Others, such as food critic David Downie, in his article “Surveying the Paris food scene: a mecca again — but is it French?” on Gadling, and Jean-Philippe de Tonnac in his review of Au Revoir to All that: The Rise and Fall of French Cuisine by Michael Steinberger, dare to question whether the French restaurant scene is still French, yet conclude that it doesn’t matter. Paris and France will always be the Elysian Fields of the food gods, no matter what their nationality, and innovation has never stopped.

What has changed is the way we eat — lighter — and the way we choose restaurants. In France and Switzerland, as in most places, the traditional restaurant guides are often outdated before they even go to print. Restaurants come and go, as do chefs. Establishments are no longer bastions of a certain type of cuisine by a certain chef. Because of this, on-line guides are more flexible and can change with the times. They can be updated daily or even hourly, unlike printed guides.

It is for this reason that The Rambling Epicure is partnering with iTaste, a Swiss-based restaurant social network, which is quickly spreading its antennae all over Europe. iTaste refers to itself as “the food critics’ social network” and “the web’s gourmet word of mouth network.”

The beauty of iTaste is that you can define your tastes in restaurants, read reviews of user-critics with similar taste, and follow their reviews on a regular basis, just as you do with any social network.

Their argument is that Google is convenient, but a human search engine is even better. In the iTaste communitiy, each iTaster becomes a food critic and shares his or her reviews with their contacts and followers.

iTaste was founded by Paul de la Rochefauld in Geneva, Switzerland, and has slowly been spreading its wings to the rest of Europe, including France, Germany, Italy and Belgium. It is in French, English and German. Since it gives you the possibility of entering a location and a restaurant, its possibilities are endless. You can even be the first one to start by entering your favorite restaurant in your home country. See you there!

Click here to go to iTaste.

Un Trafalgar culinaire : La cuisine française, un chef d’œuvre en péril

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, March 4, 2011 Permalink 0

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par Jean-Philippe de Tonnac

Click here for English

Michael Steinberger, La cuisine française, un chef d’œuvre en péril, traduit de l’américain par Simon Duran [Au Revoir To All That, Bloomsbury, New York, 2009], Fayard, 2011.

Qui aime bien châtie bien. Prenez la France. La Fraaaaaance !, comme disait le Général. Voilà le sujet urticant par excellence. Parmi ses thuriféraires et inconditionnels, obsédés par l’idée de ce qu’est la France en essence et assez peu en actes, les étrangers qui fréquentent ce pays, qui l’adorent tout en conservant leur distance, une sorte de regard critique, ces étrangers sont souvent les plus enragés. Pour eux les Français ne sont tout simplement pas à la hauteur de leur histoire qu’ils desservent et trahissent à l’envie. La cuisine française, un chef d’œuvre en péril, le livre de Michael Steinberger, œnologue de réputation faite, chroniqueur au The New Yorker ou au The New York Times Magazine, est des plus symptomatiques de cette façon de considérer que le haut héritage qui échoit à cette France en décomposition économique et spirituelle, c’est un peu la confiture aux cochons. Vous pouvez, si vous voulez, remplacer la confiture par ce « gâteau de foies blonds » qui a fait la gloire d’Alain Chapel (« une purée de foies de poulet et de moelle de bœuf servie avec une sauce au homard et à la crème », décrit par le critique gastronomique Craig Claiborne du New York Times comme « l’une des plus grandes gloires culinaires de la génération actuelle »), c’est la même chose. La charge est peut-être salutaire puisqu’il s’agit d’essayer de mettre la gastronomie française au défi de s’égaler une fois encore. Mais elle est cruelle aussi car elle ne pardonne aucun écart, veut crever les arrogances et les baudruches qui desservent, selon l’auteur, un héritage inestimable. Steinberger est une bête qui aime, et donc une bête féroce. Comme l’empereur Commodore défiant le général Maximus dans Gladiator, il convoque les traîtres dans l’arène après leur avoir planté une dague dans le dos.