The French have given the world so many wonderful things. Think of Matisse, Monet, Bonnard, Gaugin, and the other great French Impressionists. Wine, of course—the French raised wine to the highest of heights in Champagne, Burgundy, and Bordeaux. Oh, and haute cuisine—three-star restaurants—soul-warming bistros, nouvelle cuisine. Encyclopedic cookbooks. Heady perfumes. The word “chic.” The finest, fanciest furniture and superb porcelain. The Louvre. Fashion, both serene and scary. Berlioz, Bize, and Offenbach.
Verticle food—fashion, not function
But that was then. Today, in the wine trade, for example, both the French government (!) and irreversible social changes are crippling the wine industry. In France, wine consumption has dropped precipitously—50 percent in the past twenty years. The finest wines are way too expensive and saddled with hype, while the middle and vin ordinaire operations are going le bust. In France’s export markets, competition is rocketing. The Brits are buying wine from Australia and New Zealand. Wines from California, Argentina, Chile, Australia, Spain, and Italy are making great inroads against the exportation of French offerings. Draconian French laws against wine drinking are choking production and stifling innovation. Many in the French wine industry are rightly incensed that their very own government is helping to drive them out of business.
Decades ago in haute cuisine, there was French cuisine, period. Then, nouvelle cuisine became a revolt against the three-star restaurant mentality—everything cooked in butter following strict and fussy rules. Nouvelle cuisine broke the old rules and made new ones; the portions were pretty small.
Now there are two “new” food movements in France. One is seriously interesting, the other is seriously insane.
The serious one is called Le Fooding. Le Fooding is a gastronomic movement started about ten years ago to break the rules again, offering a change in gastronomy without gimmicks. The Le Fooding founders, Alexandre Cammas and Emmanuel Rubin—two gourmet journalists—were fed up, if we may, with conservative French cuisine that was going nowhere; cuisine that was just repeating itself, according to the founders.
In short, Le Fooding’s food is casual yet serious. It is food made by chefs who cook with soul and feeling and not with rules or traditional approaches. It wants to break down French cuisine snobbery with its pretentiousness and the finicky critical approach. Cammas says it’s all about liberty and that a delicious meal is a rich experience, whatever and wherever it is, from a picnic to an informal restaurant.
Le Fooding might also prove to be useful French wake-up call against the so-called “molecular” gastronomy that catapulted Ferran Adrià’s elBulli restaurant in Catalonia to the very top of the world. Quickly, Spain became the center of the gourmet food universe. Adrià’s is the sort of hyper-precious, super-inventive food that had the critics going gaga; they voted elBulli the best restaurant in the world for the past four years. ElBulli took eight thousand diners a year but had requests for two million seatings! Just now, the gourmet world is in a tizzy: elBulli is closing because it’s losing so much money, even with full houses. Having forty chefs in the kitchen each night can really inflate costs!
The other movement—much newer—is simply nuts (though you’re not allowed to eat any; it smells to me of a silly gimmick). It’s a diet called L’Air Fooding. One does it by acting as if she (let’s face it, no guy would do this) is eating, but doesn’t actually eat; it’s pretend eating. The alternative is that you’re allowed to feast on a bowl of water with some salt in it. Madonna has been featured “doing it” in an ad for Dolce & Gabbana. Mime eating. Yes, folks, dumb. From the land that brought you Marcel Marceau to this—Morsel Notso.
Venturing slight far afield—I just had to say something about this (and I’m sure the French must be involved, right?!)—I am trying to find out who invented “vertical food.” You know, when a chef takes a main course and piles up the food elements on top of each other like some crazed architect playing with his food. Recently, I ordered a fish dish at a fancy restaurant. It came thus: on the bottom, pureed red beets. Then, on top of the semi-liquid beets, a piece of fish sautéed in butter. On top of the fish, a salad doused in a vinegary dressing that was dripping on to the fish. The fish tasted like vinegar and beets, and it was a mess to deconstruct. When I complained to the manager, he told me in no uncertain terms that “the chef is creative, and he likes it that way.” There is a very fine line between creativity and defeating your purpose.
Maybe that’s why some crazies are opting for L’Air Fooding. Not much can go wrong with a soup made of water and salt—except, of course, the taste. Also, you never have to share.
Ed Schwartz has been involved in many aspects of fine wine for 30 years and has worked with top wineries in California, Italy and France. His writings on wine, food and travel have appeared in the SF Chronicle, LA Times and Image magazine.
