no. 61: ratcheting skyward

A potted history of the last 50 years of French gastronomy might go something like this:

In the beginning, there was the cuisine of Escoffier, characterized by formality, richness, and above all elaboration. There was a culinary canon, and it was as thoroughly native as the guillotine. Sauces were complicated focal points, with an intensity and richness that often surpassed the flavor of the ingredients on the plate. Service happened table-side and required at least three tuxedos, a silver mine, and a flambé burner. The pinnacles of haute cuisine were tessellated centerpieces of game and shellfish and as many vegetables as you could round up, seasoned with the sweat of the many commis doing the knifework. 

Around 50 years ago, a generation of chefs emerged who decided that they actually rather liked the pure taste of their ingredients. They’d traveled, and realized that some cooks outside France actually had interesting ideas. They’d trained under people who made the classic sauces and elaborate centerpieces, but felt that these presentations, this centering of the sauce, could be replaced by a cleaner, clearer sort of cooking.  This, more or less, was nouvelle cuisine. It utterly changed the aesthetic on the plate, but kept the brigade in the kitchen and the tuxedos in the dining room. 

30 years ago, Yves Camdeborde opened La Regalade. He was the first of a generation. Folks who’d been sous chefs and chefs de cuisine under the grandmasters of nouvelle cuisine got tired of toques and tuxedos and salles à manger scaled for maneuvering a hoop skirt. Instead, when they struck out on their own, they opened what looked and felt like bistros, small restaurants with simple dining rooms and casual service (which were also, conveniently, much cheaper to finance and run).¹ They served bistro dishes refined with techniques from haute cuisine – there’s no way of describing the cooking that doesn’t sound hackneyed now, but at the time, it felt revolutionary. This wound up being called bistronomie (this book is a nice summation).² 

Bistronomie was a disjuncture, a new way of being a restaurant, and its appeal was due at least in part to how accessible the prices were. There were half as many things on the plate, a quarter as many staff, and so these restaurateurs charged a fifth of what their old bosses did.

Thirty years on, the ratcheting of time and inflation have sent prices skyward, but the dining rooms are changing too. The brigades are bigger, the table knives more ostentatious, the uniforms are sharper, more starched. It’s unclear what’s cause and what’s effect – have they acquired more expensive trappings because they need to justify charging more, or do they charge more because they’ve acquired more trappings? Many of the chefs now run restaurant groups, and in some cases, chains. Yves Camdeborde judges Masterchef. This might be called selling out, but that term seems dated in itself – nobody sells out anymore, because we’re all brands now. You can still get astonishing, vivacious cooking in Paris for what feels like almost nothing today, but it’s no longer from the iconic names of bistronomie.

What this tells me is that the original restaurants in their original incarnations were never truly sustainable. The prices were friendly because everyone running them was undercharging. The staff were in their 20s and slept in the restaurant (terrific public healthcare and social security help too). The food was great because the chefs were working 16 hour days. 

Few people can work 16 hour days for 20 years. Fewer still want to. Chefs grow up, too: at some point, families and mortgages seem more exciting than tattoos and new drugs, and they’re more expensive. Society doesn’t offer many other ways to pursue these goals other than to start making more money, and the restaurant world doesn’t offer many options for doing so other than to raise your prices, start a restaurant group, or, ideally, both.³ From one perspective, what we’re seeing is the lifecycle of a healthy business, maturing with its owners and growing to support them.⁴ 

But a stupendous lunch costing 80€ will never be as exciting as a stupendous lunch costing 23€. The first is a meal, the second is a statement. It says that good cooking should be available to everyone. That having a good time is more important than having tablecloths. That you don’t have a 100,000€ kitchen and a huge brigade, but are going to put something beautiful into the world anyway. This audaciousness was surely as much a part of bistronomie's appeal.

So one story here is that chefs and restaurants are bound to get more staid with time, that luxury has an inexorable appeal. But maybe there’s another story here as well, about just how good restaurants can be, and how those years of grace can only be fueled by optimism and heedlessness and unsustainable sacrifice.

1. There’s a fascinating article to be written comparing the evolution of the restaurant scene in Paris to France’s macroeconomic numbers – one day. 

2. I’m unsure if the term bistronomy is actually a good description these days. It originated because many of the practitioners actually took over old bistros and served at least some dishes from the bistro canon. These places still exist, but you’ll also hear the term applied to restaurants with resolutely contemporary cooking and Wallpaper-stylish dining rooms. It seems like the term gets applied to any restaurant that has even a smidgen of ambition, but isn’t grand enough to be haute cuisine. 

3. I guess you can sell your tiny restaurant, move to Asia, and earn a substantial salary as an executive chef at one of the big hotels.

4. Although we can, and always should, ask if the business is doing the same for its staff. In my experience the answer is almost always no.