A battle for the soul of French gastronomy

By Mike Steinberger

On Monday, some 4,000 gastronauts will converge on the French coastal resort of Deauville for a two-day food festival called Omnivore. The fifth edition of this annual gathering will feature a number of eminent chefs, among them Alain Passard, Regis Marcon, Albert Adrià (brother of Ferran), David Kinch and Franck Cerutti. And there will be demos, discussions, and an endless procession of food and wine tastings. Omnivore is the brainchild of a youthful French food critic named Luc Dubanchet. A former editor of Gault Millau, the restaurant guide, the 39-year-old Dubanchet has made it his personal mission to shake French cuisine out of its lethargy and insularity. He believes that French gastronomy is ripe for revolution, and the Omnivore festival is, among other things, an expression of that insurrectionary spirit.

A married father of three (his wife is a judge), the cherubic, bespectacled Dubanchet does not exactly look the part of a firebrand. But ask him about any number of topics related to French cuisine, and the rhetoric quickly turns incendiary. The bid to have French cuisine declared part of the world’s cultural patrimony by Unesco? “Disgusting. Stupid. Sarkozy doesn’t even like cuisine.” Classical French cooking, as codified by Escoffier? “Boring techniques, boring service.” Nouvelle cuisine? “An empty plate with a kiwi on the side.” The Michelin Guide? “A dead weight. It is stupid to give stars – we are not in school.” Suffice to say, subtlety is not his strong point. But Dubanchet has no time for niceties – not when he is waging a battle for the soul of French gastronomy.

These are unsettled times for French cuisine. Traditional bistros and brasseries are struggling, high-end restaurants are too, and France, after centuries of gastronomic hegemony, can no longer claim to be the undisputed first nation of food. Indeed, many seasoned eaters believe Spain is now the source of the most innovative and interesting cooking. Jean-Luc Naret, the director of the Michelin Guide, recently proclaimed Tokyo to be the world’s most exciting food city, and Alain Ducasse, the pre-eminent French chef of this era, said last month that London was now the restaurant capital of the world, a comment that undoubtedly deflated a few soufflés in Paris.

To hear Dubanchet tell it, French cuisine fell into a rut because of complacency, conservatism and myopia. The French, convinced that their supremacy in the kitchen was unassailable, paid no attention to the culinary awakenings happening in other parts of the world, and were content to hit the same notes over and over. “People didn’t really cook; they just practised a cuisine,” he said as we chatted over drinks. As his comments regarding Michelin suggest, Dubanchet believes that the all-powerful Guide has had an especially pernicious influence, rewarding stodgy cooking and excessively ostentatious restaurants , and placing French haute cuisine in a sort of time warp.

This was the same indictment handed down by Henri Gault and Christian Millau back in the late 1960s. Gault and Millau were the French journalists turned restaurant critics whose eponymous magazine (which later spawned an annual guide) was the house organ of the nouvelle cuisine movement. One of their chief goals was to convince chefs and restaurant-goers alike to stop “slouching toward Bibendum”, as they put it, to stop treating Michelin as the Holy Writ of French gastronomy. They did not succeed in dethroning Michelin, but the Gault Millau guide became an influential source in its own right, and also an important incubator of journalistic talent. Le Figaro’s François Simon and Le Point’s Gilles Pudlowski, probably the two most influential restaurant critics in France, both began their careers at Gault Millau.

Dubanchet spent five years as Gault Millau’s editor, from 1999 to 2003, before leaving to start a monthly food magazine called Omnivore. He saw that there were young chefs trying to shake things up who did not want to be weighed down by centuries of tradition, and who wished to take French cuisine in a new, more creative direction, and his aim was to call attention to their efforts and to encourage other chefs to follow suit. Much as the Gault Millau of old had championed the nouvelle stylings of chefs like Michel Guérard, Alain Chapel, and the Troisgros brothers, Omnivore cast its spotlight on young innovators such as Pascal Barbot (L’Astrance), Alexandre Gauthier (Auberge de la Grenouillère) and Gilles Choukroun (MBC).

The magazine quickly found an enthusiastic audience and soon spawned both an annual restaurant guide, Le Carnet de Route Omnivore, and the yearly food festival, which debuted in 2006. The festival was originally held in Le Havre; two years ago, it moved a few miles down the Normandy coast to Deauville. Since its inception, it has been a magnet for top chefs from around the world, among them Ferran Adrià, Heston Blumenthal, Michel Bras, Pierre Gagnaire, Pierre Hermé, and New York chef David Chang. Lots of avant-garde cooking is on the menu, accompanied by thought-provoking discussions about the future of food and fine dining. Omnivore is also a platform for France’s counterculture wine movement, with natural wine producers from across the country gathering to show their wares.

Dubanchet believes that French gastronomy is now in a period of delicious upheaval; the old order is crumbling, and it is not yet clear what will rise in its place. “If you asked me 10 years ago what French cuisine was, I would have said it was boring: it was big chefs’ hats, three Michelin stars, expensive menus with foie gras, truffles, and lobster,” he said. “But that world has now collapsed, and I don’t know what French cuisine is today.” From his point of view, that is a good thing, and it has taken some of the urgency out of his work.

But there are still fights to be waged. Dubanchet thinks his compatriots still need to recognise that great food is now a global phenomenon. “This idea that we have to be number one – who cares? It’s nonsense. We are not the only chefs in the world, and while we have a lot to teach the rest of the world, there’s also a lot we can learn from it.”

Mike Steinberger’s ‘Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine and the End of France’ is published by Bloomsbury

Tom Meppelink:

The article is about a food-festival in France called Omnivore. This two-day festival attracts all kind of famous French master-chefs and is a great place for new gastronomical discoveries. 

As the article goes, the French cuisine fell into a rut because of complacency, conservatism and myopia. The French, convinced that their supremacy in the kitchen was unassailable, paid no attention to the culinary awakenings happening in other parts of the world, and were content to hit the same notes over and over. “People didn’t really cook; they just practised a cuisine,” he said as we chatted over drinks. As his comments regarding Michelin suggest, Dubanchet believes that the all-powerful Guide has had an especially pernicious influence, rewarding stodgy cooking and excessively ostentatious restaurants , and placing French haute cuisine in a sort of time warp.