During the past three centuries, African, Italian and even German cuisine have helped form tastebuds in New Orleans and her environs. And it’s clear that Vietnamese cuisine has arrived in the Crescent City when somebody named Michael Gulotta, rather than, say, Michael Nguyen, is one of its most recognized purveyors. In April, Food and Wine named the MoPho proprietor one of its best new chefs for 2016.
But New Orleans cuisine always has been, and God willing always will be, most rooted in French fare. There are many reasons little New Orleans is recognized as an international destination for food, but France is the main one — because France is the food capital of the world.
A recent trip to this mother country reminded me of something that few places do: that New Orleans’ culinary life actually has room to improve. In several respects, France continues to, ahem, eat our lunch.
To begin with, there’s the culinary entrepreneurship. Free-market types in the U.S. of A. like to talk up the unmatched American entrepreneurial spirit. France, where life choices tend to be more constrained and the economic environment are reputed to be stifling, makes for a frequent foil in such comments.
I don’t know enough about the matter to verify whether France is lacking in market entrepreneurship, but if it is true, I think it’s at least partly because the French are spending vast amounts of their entrepreneurial spirit on growing and making food. I visited two different sets of family friends, and in one case met extended family of friends. Among the three, one family lived in Paris, another in the Loire valley and another in a small town near Lyons. What did they all have in common? They all grow fruit and vegetable gardens in their yards. They’re all making their own preserves. They’re all happy to spend hours painstakingly preparing a dinner.
And, of course, they all have wine cellars. Here’s where we have no hope of matching France. The excellent Bordeaux that your host casually pulls out to pair with an afternoon snack would never make it overseas, and if it did, would cost three times as much. In fact, the wine consumption might sap some of the French entrepreneurial spirit. There’s only so much you can accomplish with that much wine in your system.
The French also devote a large percentage of their lives to the eating process itself. Our Easter supper lasted six or seven hours. I lost count of the number of courses. If there had been a pheasant and a suckling pig, I would have expected to look over and see Louis XIV at the head of the table.
The languorous pace was even more apparent a few days later, when, while visiting with other friends at their house in Saumur, we stopped by for what was supposed to be a quick bite to eat before touring the area that afternoon. Our “quick bite” lasted more than four hours and included several courses and multiple trips to the wine cellar.
Everybody knows the French are unmatched in the category of haute cuisine. But it’s one thing to know it intellectually, quite another to taste it. Our dinner at a country chateau in the Loire Valley was a classical, unhurried dining experience — perhaps the most exquisite, most gorgeously presented, most lovingly prepared meal I have ever had. The wait staff went about their work with an ancient pride in the grand style of service. In a country not known for attentive waiters, these gentlemen were beyond professional: They were priestly.
Finally, there are the public markets. Walking past the brimming mélanges of fish, of poultry, of sausages and, above all, of cheeses with their triumphant aromas, you realize that France is the world’s culinary touchstone for a reason. Standing directly in her shadow is not a bad place for New Orleans to be.
