A deep-rooted, committed gastronomy
Ritual tasting & culinary identities
Gastronomy, the luxury of the times
Luxury is usually synonymous with rarity. If the contemporary chefs are now shaking things up, the gastronomy has long focused exclusively on exceptional products., We're moving away from foodstuffs deemed too simple and commonplace.
In the 15th century, Rabelais in its Pantagruel was salivating at the idea of caviar, caviar, an exceptional hors d'oeuvre made from sturgeon eggs. Originating in Russia, caviar (from tartare khavia) was imported to France in the 1920s by the brothers Petrossian who fled the Russian Revolution to found their eponymous company. For a long time the only caviar-producing country in the world, Russia then ceded its infrastructure on the shores of the Caspian Sea to Iran. Poaching, low-quality production and a reputation for bling have since deeply tarnished the reputation of this black gold. It's worth remembering that since 2008, wild caviar has been banned in favor of farmed caviar and that, despite French production being in the lead for a long time, the majority of caviar available on the market today is Chinese.
Another sought-after delicacy, truffles are now on the menu of many bistronomic establishments, after having long been reserved for exceptional tables. Received at L'Élysée by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in 1975, Paul Bocuse to serve his truffle soup covered with puff pastry (the future VGE black truffle soup or Élysée Soup) : « Mr. President, let's break bread». A seemingly relaxed approach, but make no mistake: a time of noble gastronomy where truffles, foie gras and lobsters still play the leading roles.
Experience tasting rituals
The experience gastronomy goes beyond pleasure of the taste buds, and not just because of the prestige of its ingredients.. From the reclining meals of the Neo-Assyrian empire, to ancient feasts and contemporary brunches, there's a veritable table setting, ceremonies that the ancient Egyptians mastered to perfection, they whose the banquet was inherently multisensory. On the banks of the Nile, the wine jars are richly decorated and the guests, lulled by the songs of the musicians and the melody of the arched harps, adorn themselves with their most precious jewels (whose spiritual significance is recounted in this interview by Maryline Sellier, Doctor of Egyptology). The scents of food and drink: breads, beers, wines, poultry and meat made from onyx or sycamore figs mingle with the fragrances of onguent cones worn by guests on the crown of their skulls. Everyone keeps a lotus flower close at hand to savor its fragrance between courses. Taste, sight, hearing and smell are all catered for, but another sense, less in demand today, is also invited to the festivities: touch.. Ancient Egyptians didn't hesitate to smear themselves with ointment and caress their loved ones during these most formal of banquets.
More streamlined, our modern tableware is nonetheless richly accessorized.. The plate appeared in the Renaissance, while the white tablecloth comes from the Middle Ages. But the Tableware act as much more than decorative elements, revealing our habits and customs more than we can imagine. Jade chopsticks, broken porcelain reconstituted with gold lacquer in the Japanese tradition of kintsugi, or Portuguese glazed earthenware from oven to table: these objects are accompanied by a ceremonial that reveals a certain poetry of everyday life. These humble everyday objects, whose aesthetic or artisanal grace can also move, bear the imprint of a culture, its craftsmanship or industry. The current craze for ceramic tableware and modeling classes demonstrates our desire to surround ourselves with handcrafted objects with organic forms born of the patient gesture of Man.
The choice of plate and its preparation give rise to real competitions. No matter how prestigious the table, the staging the plate is the stage for boundless creativity, the expression ground for a personal storytelling, to become real edible paintings. For the artist duo Renards Gourmets, specialists in photography and culinary styling « what's important is that the dish is legible and that attention is focused on the main piece.« .
Some go even further, like Jenny Dorsey. The Chinese-American leader and activist uses his plates to denounce injustice and raise awareness of the fine line between fusion cuisine and the expropriation of minority culinary heritage : a culinary activism.
While some prefer molecular cuisine and its scientific precepts, others opt for spontaneity without leaving the success of their dishes to chance. La experiential gastronomy offers a cuisine that is not devoid of concept, a taste exploration, visual and aromatic, or even tactile and auditory! Let's give credit where credit is due. strongly infused with storytelling, the merit of celebrating creativity and innovation. In Shanghai, French chef Paul Pairet «kidnaps» his guests and lets them experience’Ultraviolet, his 3-star underground restaurant, an immersive evening around a avant-garde cuisine put into context by technology(scent diffusers, screens). The Chef and his 30-strong brigade deliver to their 10 guests a cognitive experience combining tastes, sounds, scents and images to awaken the subconscious to the psychology of taste, psycho taste«.
From fast food to slow food, the chicken or the egg?
In the face of these food revolutions, the question of preserving our gastronomic traditions and the evolution of our diets.
Cuisine undeniably plays a role in a country's influence. The junk food served up by fast-food outlets and the big chains on the other side of the Atlantic is now public health enemy number one. It's worth remembering, however, that the richly ornamented remains of a antique fast food (thermopolium) have been unearthed in Pompeii, from Campania chicken to Kentucky chicken: proof that the United States is not the origin of these much-maligned street stalls?
After having been a favourite in many restaurants, the fusion cuisine is gradually being abandoned. Far from wanting to confine themselves to their native culinary identity, chefs share a common desire to visit multiple kitchens, ingredients or cooking methods without distorting them or depriving them of their attributes. This philosophy is embodied by Mory Sacko, starred for his restaurant Mosuke, and is a dialogue between Japan, France and Mali, with no desire to create a hybrid cuisine.
Art has never ceased to feed on our attraction to what we eat, even to the point of opening the doors of our museums to culinary exploration.
In Marseille, the MUCEM is currently presenting its exhibition The great Mezze to explore the diversity of Mediterranean cuisine and answer these crucial questions: how to define and preserve geographic and cultural culinary authenticity, while sharing it with others? How to protect a diet without preventing it from evolving? Answers provided by artists and through a trail of 550 heritage objects and documents to be discovered at a slow pace until 2023.
Sometimes controversial, but always highly sensory, our cuisine is deeply rooted in the pleasure and delight of the five senses. Our hedonism can, however, be reasoned and, as a true epicureanism, reconcile sensations and conscience, as chefs and committed producers rightly prove in the third part of this article.