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This article is talking about the decline in French cuisine in Paris during the end of the 20th century, and its more recent revival in the past decade.

There was a push back against the snobby, traditional, Escoffier worshiping state of French cuisine during the second half of the 20th century. Parisians were becoming more and more frustrated with the idea of French chefs making the same French food in the same French style restaurants as they always had. This led to a a new generation of younger, often foreign, chefs revolutionizing the way French food could be cooked and served.

These young chefs were redefining what it meant to cook and dine at nice French restaurants and bistros. As Dubanchet says, young restaurant-goers are seizing control of France’s culinary tradition and making it their own.

What we are seeing in Paris right now is a whole new French food renaissance happening in real time. We are seeing this food change and evolve for the better - truly we are a lucky, lucky people.

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-          French food has become so popular around the world and so sought-after that a lot of foreign chefs go to France to serve French food

-          Reminds me of the early nationalistic French chefs’ ability to promote their cuisine throughout France, Europe and the world

-          The French are just as interested in/enchanted by foreign food as everyone else
“diners in Paris are yearning for the sense of adventurousness and fun that prevails in other international cities.”

-          Foreigners can be French if they want to be French
“an Illinois native like Rose can make French food every bit as authentic, sophisticated and delicious as a chef from Lyon.”

-          Changing foodscape of French cuisine – international chefs, “no-frills bistros” with modest prices, weaker economy, younger chefs,

-          Bistronomie

-          Eg. Bones by Australian James Henry, Roseval by Sardinian Simone Tondo and Anglo-American Michael Greenwood, Les Enfants Rougeby Japanese Dai Shinozuka

-          Slow restaurant culture that is not as prone to fads like other cities

-          Introduction of non-traditional French cuisine, eg. hamburgers

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"The writer Josep Pla wrote that Catalan cuisine is its landscape in a dish."
Is this any more true for Catalonia than anywhere else in the world? why/why not? ('quality, local produce')

Associations exist with the intention to 'highlight, defend, recover and promote the cuisine and produce of this seafaring district.'

Provides a sense of identity through distinction and difference (as a corollary, this becomes a tourist drawcard, as travellers seek 'authentic' experiences).

'Gastronomic associations' comprised of chefs and restaurateur - become cultural icons, authorities and gatekeepers.

Thousand year old olive trees... is this a more authentic experience?

'Experience truly authentic gastronomy in Catalonia: go fishing with professional fishers, learn to cook traditional Catalan dishes or toast with a glass of Priorat after exploring wineries on horseback.'
^although it is kind of cliche, it makes an interesting point: is a holisitic model of food preparation more authentic/more artistic than a modern, compartmentalised approach?
Archetype of the craftsman vs efficiency of the production line.

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Very Catalan-centric, focuses on the rich and vibrant history of Catalonia as one that should be celebrated as more than just another part of Spain.

Lists a whole number of cities, restaurants and recipes that it believes are unique to Catalonia in a variety of ways, either because of geographic location, climate, or history.

"The legacy of other civilisations, the climate, the landscape and traditions are all present in Catalan cuisine. Cuisine Associations invite you to discover the cuisine through traditional Catalan recipes." This quote nicely sums up how the website treats Catalonia as an individual entity, with a cuisine separate, yet linked, to the rest of Spain.

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-          Catalan cuisine is deeply rooted in tradition and history

-          Individual, specific to Catalonia

-          Meant to define/separate Catalonians from other cultures

-          Part of a broader culture that should celebrate and be proud of itself

-          Influenced by history, climate, landscape and other civilisations

-          Family is also an important unit of food because the recipes are passed down

-          Quality, goodness

-          This page emphasises the link Catalan cuisine has with its history

-          Acknowledges the influence of non-Catalonians

-          Thus, the cuisine does not exist in a vacuum solely inspired and created by Catalan people

-          Like many cuisines these features emphasise region and traditions

-          But use products found in the region

-          Every national/cultural/regional cuisine claims reference to its history, people, location etc.

-          But every nation/culture/region has been created under different circumstances, thus creating differences, similarities, crossovers, uniqueness

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Ramblings:
The way a person tastes and experiences a meal is influenced not just by their surrounds and the context of the meal, but also perhaps by their nationality,  their region of origin, and their own personal experiences. Eating a meal, like the consumption or appreciation of any art, will be a different experience for every person. However, some common ground can be established, most obviously with respect to geography.

Pampille believes in food as a holistic experience, tied to place time and place. She also believes in the timelessness of food and Traditionalism in preparation. Ferguson juxtaposes this against the modern globalized world, where well traveled and informed citizens can source ingredients from 4 corners of the map and prepare recipes from translated cookbooks. If the concept of culinary nationalism continues to exist, it will certainly take on a new form.

People tend to judge the 'authenticity' of a foreign experience based on how different it is; hence, as people 'seek connection between taste and place,' heterogeneous (i.e. traditional, national) food experiences will continue to exist.

What about when traditions jar too harshly with modern sensibilities? (e.g. moral imperialism and stuff). Fish on a stick in Japan.

French cuisine's structures and systems make it 'highly portable,' and thus Ferguson argues it does well in cooking competitions. In my humble opinion, I also feel that fact makes it easier to ascribe 'points,' and probably appeals to judges as a safe bet.

My opinion: the effect of everyone being able to see art on the production of art. On one hand it flourishes, on the other, its harder to see something truly original (as the culture around it has left its marks). Maybe there are no original ideas.

Connection between food and land ('terroir') probably less obvious now. Synchronically, you sort of get why food was such a big deal to nationalism (intertwined with the very concept of property).

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This reading furthered the idea of cuisine and nationalism being indelibly linked.

Parkhurst Ferguson references Pampille, a female cook and writer who was arguably even more ultra-nationalistic about French cuisine than her male predecessors like Careme. While she differs in that she argues for regional differences in certain recipes over a more centralist approach, she takes it to the extreme, claiming that someone from the north of France could never properly cook a southern version of  bouillabaisse. This refined awareness of what is French by name and nature turns "food from France into French food".

Parkhust Ferguson argues however that in a modern age of slowly disintegrating borders and a more digitally focused world, this desperation for culinary isolationism is becoming more and more obsolete and I absolutely agree with her. I personally do not agree with this French idea of so strongly linking national identity to cuisine. The French were eating differently 300 years ago and they will be eating differently probably not 100 years from now and to declare any shift in cuisine as unpatriotic is moronic and backwards. Food does not define nationality, it is just too flexible.

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Cookbooks are like dictionaries – they tell us what a particular cuisine is and isn’t
- eg. Pampille – pen name of Marthe Allard Daudet
- traditionalist, royalist, ‘guardians of traditions’
- does not claim to create any of the food
- humble persona but ambitious woman
- true national cuisine is found in the home kitchen and not in the predominantly male chef professions
- provincial food is the true national cuisine and unattainable by famous chefs in cities
- eg. peasant/bourgeois food, game
- even the animals seem to know they are good
- France’s soil, climate is the best
- only people born in a particular region can truly make the real forms of those dishes
- history create authenticity because it gives food a context
- dislikes contemporaries
- this emphasis on traditions also encourages a fear of losing them
- thus people like Pampille are nostalgic
- this attitude defies political beliefs
- thus cuisine can unite people
- especially in the 21st century as national borders are blurred and people can travel so easily, people want something to give themselves and their country an identity and instantly recognisable
- but how to we measure national identity?
- how can we balance traditions with our own creativity? These are two things we  value with food.

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A summary of the reading

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Summary: The irony of Grimod
The charismatic socialite Grimod de La Reyniere is considered 'the world's first restaurant critic.' After throwing his own lavish and heterodox dinner party (funeral themed, I swear he overcommitted to the joke there), Grimod began to think about the different themes of food, and that a meal allows a certain narrative to be constructed, complete with beginning, middle and end (Grimod was already familiar with food as a social lubricant, and a way to establish and maintain connections ['encouraging the assemblage to patronize his relation']. Interestingly, though these initial parties were subversive (to the extent that he ended up in jail), after the French Revolution the duality of dining was more clearly expressed by Grimod - the traditions around 'haute cuisine' could be used to uphold existing power structures, maintain distinctions between groups, and preserve centuries old social stratification ('reminder to the newly enfranchised that they needed to acquire cultural capital'). Perhaps there was a degree of 'cultural cringe' among the 'nouveaux riche' that was ripe for the picking. In any case, Grimod became something of a self-appointed cultural gatekeeper, and his almanacs became the authority on fine dining. This new prevailing mood of bringing riches to the masses, however, was in tension with the religious mores of the day  - France was a Catholic country, and gluttony was a deadly sin. Despite sweeping change through the food landscape, there still existed rigid social structures and expectations that demanded that things be done in a proper and appropriate way ('anything beyond delicacy was reviled'). Thus, it can be argued that food can shape culture, but just as happily that culture shapes food.

Thoughts: the conviviality and cordiality of food (aka unimportant ramblings)
That cooking is an art form is indisputable - though lacking the element of the eternal and the timelessness typical of 'art,' its ephemerality allows it to take on a new dynamic; its effervescence means that it is more free to be subversive, exciting, risky, challenging, haphazard, 'incorrect,' flawed. To truly understand and appreciate food, patrons must be present and invested. It is not an art that can be experienced from a safe and sterile distance, across the gulf of time and space - gastronomy demands that we sit shoulder to shoulder convivially,  level at the one table. In it's visceral nature, we find egalitarianism. Everybody eats.

(so I guess that sort of explains why it can so readily become a vanguard for social change -cf multiculturalism.)

"you're never unhappy when you're eating with your hands' - Adam Liaw

'Armies march on their stomachs' - Napoleon

'I'll tell you a secret.
Something they don't teach you in your temple.
The Gods envy us.
They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed.
You will never be lovelier than you are now.
We will never be here again.” - Achilles, Troy

guilds, cloistering of knowledge, cultural gatekeepers, culture of France (l'ordinateur vs le computer). Deliberate, authoritative maintenance of culture.

It would be fun to catalogue all the foreign words in the top ten selling cookbooks each year and graph the changing geographic focus (lexicographic analysis or something, a chill way to quantify changing feelings/culture).

I have hands and I'm self-conscious about my carving ability.

Questions:

Is this made up? Seriously? Either way, what a great story.

Misc:
I will give a small fortune to anyone who can satisfactorily explain what 'studying the arts of the table, rather than the table as art' means and explain why it was included. The author is trying to make us feel dumb for no good reason.

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the funeral supper

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- food was Grimod de La Reyniere's way to rebel against his family and society and to live with his genetic defect and overcome his self consciousness
eg. 'the funeral supper', travelling salesman, gastronomic guide book
- theatrical, passionate, extravagant, experimental
- he loved "the arts of the table" (pg. 4)

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Summarise the reading here...

...maybe 150 words?

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Summarise the reading here...

...maybe 150 words?

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http://www.catalunya.com/what-to-do/savour/gastronomy-with-a-past-with-the-cuisine-associations

Add your own byte-sized musings until you have built up a collaborative picture of the reading ready to share with the class. Consider the following:

How would you summarise the reading's content or main points?

What strikes you as novel or interesting in this reading; what did you learn?

What questions remain for you; with which points do you disagree?

How does the content relate to your own knowledge and experience?

What thoughts, ideas, examples does the reading trigger for you?

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DAY 8: Steinberger, M. 'Can anyone save French food?' New York Times

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DAY 8: Steinberger, M. 'Can anyone save French food?' New York Times

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Add your own byte-sized musings until you have built up a collaborative picture of the reading ready to share with the class. Consider the following:

How would you summarise the reading's content or main points?

What strikes you as novel or interesting in this reading; what did you learn?

What questions remain for you; with which points do you disagree?

How does the content relate to your own knowledge and experience?

What thoughts, ideas, examples does the reading trigger for you?

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thoughts, responses, ideas, examples...

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Summarise the reading here...

[double click to edit]

...maybe 150 words?

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thoughts, responses, ideas, examples...

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thoughts, responses, ideas, examples...

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thoughts, responses, ideas, examples...

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thoughts, responses, ideas, examples...

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No Readings Project work DAY 4, DAY 5 or DAY 6

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No Readings Project work DAY 4, DAY 5 or DAY 6

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DAY 3: Parkhurst Ferguson, P. 'Culinary nationalism' 

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DAY 3: Parkhurst Ferguson, P. 'Culinary nationalism' 

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Add your own byte-sized musings until you have built up a collaborative picture of the reading ready to share with the class. Consider the following:

How would you summarise the reading's content or main points?

What strikes you as novel or interesting in this reading; what did you learn?

What questions remain for you; with which points do you disagree?

How does the content relate to your own knowledge and experience?

What thoughts, ideas, examples does the reading trigger for you?

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thoughts, responses, ideas, examples...

[double click to edit]

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Summarise the reading here...

...maybe 150 words?

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DAY 2: Kaufman, C. 'The Claw at the table: The gastronomic criticism of Grimod de la Reynière'

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DAY 2: Kaufman, C. 'The Claw at the table: The gastronomic criticism of Grimod de la Reynière'

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Add your own byte-sized musings until you have built up a collaborative picture of the reading ready to share with the class. Consider the following:

How would you summarise the reading's content or main points?

What strikes you as novel or interesting in this reading; what did you learn?

What questions remain for you; with which points do you disagree?

How does the content relate to your own knowledge and experience?

What thoughts, ideas, examples does the reading trigger for you?