French food is fancy, romantic, and classy… But why? I dug into French history to see why we view French cuisine the way we do.
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Credits:
Producer – Matthew Li
Production Assistant – Mana Chuabang
Script Supervisor – Russ Medcalf
Special thanks:
Louis Glover
Yusef Iqbal
Yeevonne Lim
Dylan Payne
Brandon Goddard
Logan Johnson
Music from Musicbed & Tom Fox
SOURCES:
DW – https://shorturl.at/jquF8
Britannia – https://shorturl.at/jqO67
BBC – https://shorturl.at/bmDOS
Western Society for French History – https://shorturl.at/ityAI
Timestamps:
0:00 – French cuisine is weird
1:56 – French food used to be looked down on
2:27 – The man who changed French culture
4:11 – The Era of Versailles
6:52 – French cuisine gets codified
8:06 – Let them eat cake
8:51 – How the French Revolution gave us restaurants
11:16 – How the world fell in love with French cuisine
11:55 – French food is falling off?
23 Comments
I'm French, and thank you for your dedication into this food channel. Continue the great job!
Here before he blows up to 150k subs hahaha. This guy is awesome
The French perfected the art of cooking. Meanwhile in Italy someone wanted to make good food available for the lower classes too. So he wrote a book with all sorts of pasta’s we all know, and it became wildly popular. And now Italian food is the most loved food in the world, while French isn’t. Because we’re all what used to be peasants nowadays
I never know what people mean when they say "french inspired" or "french cuisine" 💀
its like this weirdly ambiguous thing and you can literally cook some fish, add some lemon slices and thyme and call it "french inspired"
ok? where is the character lmao
Bro, your level of information and intellectual fascinate me a lot. A person who was cultivated by Le Cordon Bleu institution and trained well by this french chefs and tradition has open my mind about how the history and cooking and art and etc combine into this one finesse nation. Thank you for this content dude. God bless you for existing in this world. F the doubters, haters or losers and keep giving us all this beautiful information and knowledge. Godspeed. Merci beaucoup mon ami. C'est la vie. Cheers. All the best <3
Thank you so interesting
You should look into Augustus Escoffier, he’s definitely a second major reason
Great video. The downside to this "glory" is indeed that people around the world don’t what real French food is. It is amazing but less marketable that Italian or Japanese.
This video is a good, but you didn't mention the Haute Cuisine and especially Auguste Escoffier.
Which makes this video missing some information. The portion pertaining to Louis XIV and his history was somewhat dragged out, and could have been condensed. Despite this, the premise was clear.
Also, your style reminds me of Johnny Harris videos, keep it up!
This channel is really good!
love the WI – Madison shirt mate, as someone from Wisconsin ! 🧀
I really like your style of interweaving the history of culture to that of food! I do the same, but you do it for topics I don’t know about, but would like to know about.
Well done
I think you missed a trick by not incorporating a section on the difference between the classic haute cuisine and the nouvelle cuisine that is currently much more associated with fancy restaurants; plates with very little food on them, but arranged elegantly and artfully.
That said, I enjoyed the video and think you did a very good job at presenting French food both respectfully and honestly – because it IS, after all, just a national cuisine… I love it, but nobody can convince me that it's inherently better than, say, Japanese or Moroccan or Italian cooking. (Also, I share your bewilderment at the changed meaning of "entrée" in the US. Weird stuff happens in languages, and that's not just in US English.)
Your content has improved a lot. Keep up the great work!
Traditionally the entrée course was exactly what you suggested that it is: a starter course. In France this course might be, for example, a salad, soup, escargots, or pate with small vegetables. The entrée then leads to the plat principal (main dish) and this is where you find the really substantial dish organized around roast meat, poultry, fish. As an American, I think that we imported the term entrée a bit outside of its context. In other words, I do not think that there is a strong food culture tradition in the USA of serving a meal in a standardized and sequential series of distinct and different dishes, one at a time, like acts in a play. As an American who has lived in several European countries (and have now been living in Italy for the better part of a decade) I can attest to the absolute centrality of a structured and historic food culture that is an important part of European culture in general. Great video!
Living in France since 2015. French cuisine is now in a process of a "revolution". And this is due to immigration. The classical fine dine still exists but people are eating more regularly food from the Magreb or other geographic areas. Cuscus with merguez is becoming a staple. There is a lot of fusion, specially Japanese/Korean french and Senegal/Malian influences are becoming more common. I am more optimistic regarding french cuisine future.By the way, the cheese naan that you could find frequently in many Indian restaurants was invented in Paris. And the best baguette in Paris (2023) is made by a Sri Lanka immigrant.
I feel like the Michelin stars being french centered also solidified the idea that french cuisine is fancy.
there are definitely staple french dishes you can find in any french restaurant. not every one has this super unique michelin star type food
french food is considered fancy because most dedicated french restaurants are higher end. in america literally everywhere has a neighborhood pizza place that is not that expensive. usually a french restaurant is considered fine dining due to the complexity of preparing some dishes.
Because when they had terrible leadership, starving peasants had to take snails and frogs and onions and stale bread and turn it into something edible. That sharpens the skill.
Real ones are very familiar with Omelette du Fromage…
Really interesting dive in the ins and outs of French cuisine. I would have to add something tho.
The restaurant revolution happened a long time ago, but these first restaurants were NOTHING like ours today. These were brutal places, and chefs were considered pretty poorly even though the experiences were fancy. Not until one guy changed everything. Auguste Escoffier, a french chef, changed everything about the actual workings of restaurants. He standardized and "militarized" the kitchens of those establishments, and revolutionised how chef were viewed a century ago. He changed how kitchen were built, organized, he specialised the different jobs we have today, he made everything more safe/clean. His methods were SO GOOD that everyone wanted to learn from him. His restaurants/palaces in france and london were simply the best restaurants in the world. Every chef wanted to learn from french chefs because they were so efficient. Many chefs were sent all over the world to teach how to actually run a kitchen ( not cook, run a restaurant). THAT's the key difference between all the other cuisines : we just did it first.
Also french cuisine is moslty defined by what we call terroir, which translates to the products of the land. Meaning, french cuisine is based on very specific products ( cheeses, weird meats, wines, alcohols…). The same way indian cuisine is defined more so by it's immense library of spices, and spice mixes, french cuisine is indifferentiable from it's produces.