Is French cuisine still the best in the world? Alain Fontaine, owner and chef of the restaurant Le Mesturet and president of the French association of master restaurateurs, answers this question in Estelle Midi this Monday, October 21.
Blanquette, quiche Lorraine, aligot, beef bourguignon, fondue, baguette, macaron, escargot… nothing better than French cuisine. While TripAdvisor recently revealed that the best restaurant in the world was French, Estelle Midi’s columnists are asking themselves the question: is French cuisine still the best?
Unfortunately, French cuisine, which is listed as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO, is losing popularity. According to certain rankings, France sometimes comes in third, other times in eighth position of the best cuisines in the world. Generally, Italian, Chinese and Portuguese cuisine come out on top.
For Périco Légasse, “There is no debate”. “Why do we have to compare elements that are not comparable… There are great cuisines all over the world!”, assures the columnist of Estelle Midi. The journalist continues: “We have been comparing things for 40 years incomparable. There’s no point in comparing cuisines. Cuisine is about people who travel, who pass it on.”
“France is a laboratory with chefs who are always innovating”
An opinion shared by Alain Fontaine, owner and chef of the restaurant Le Mesturet. “I don’t know if French cuisine is the best, but we can say that it is the richest, the most diverse, notably with this richness of the territories”. The president of the French association of master restaurateurs highlights this “absorption” capacity of chefs who always manage to reinvent themselves and draw inspiration from cuisines around the world.
“We have this ability to have absorbed the cuisines of all populations and that is very important. Our culinary history is linked to the past, but also to the present. All the great leaders will tell you: they knew how to absorb the wealth of all countries. And our geographical location also helped,” he concedes.
For Alain Fontaine, French genius, it is to have had leaders who had this skill of absorption with humility. And who have also been able to export this heritage throughout the world.
Is French cuisine still the best in the world? – 21/10
He concludes: “France is a laboratory with chefs who are always innovating. I don’t know if we are the best, but we have chefs who are always working to find ideas. They are researchers in this culinary art.” Périco Légasse ends the debate with this sentence: “French cuisine is revolution and integration at the same time”.
