Where Have All the French Restaurants Gone?

A long time passing.

In the 1960s, the top New York restaurants were mostly French. Yes, there was Mamma Leone’s and Maxwell’s Plum but some of us remember those bastions of classic French cooking including La Grenouille, La Caravelle, La Côte Basque, Lutèce, Le Pavillon, La Toque Blanche, Le Manoir, Le Mistral, etc. And what about all of those French cookbooks starting with Julia’s Mastering The Art…, Richard Olney’s Simple French Food, the works of Jacques Pépin, Simply French by Patricia Wells and Joël Robuchon, etc.

When I travel the world, I ask the same question, “Is French cooking still relevant to how you prepare food?” and the answer is almost always, “Yes.” How to address the cutting board, how to use a knife, how to prep vegetables, how to make a pan sauce, the art of the sauté are all basics that have at least some relevance to most cuisines.
French cooking has been thrown out the kitchen door as one would with scraps for the chickens. Perhaps a bit of expiation is called for? A reminder of what we have lost despite the whiff of empire, the French restaurant popping up around the world, offering a carefully regimented brigade de cuisine from Singapore to San Francisco?

I recently picked up a copy of Olney’s Simple French Food and discovered a clarion call to remember that French cuisine is still a culinary foundation. (How many times did Julia Child tell me, and everyone else, to go to cooking school in Paris?) The gratin. The omelet. Braised vegetables. Simple soups. Chops in a skillet. Fresh desserts. The salad. The stew. And specific dishes as well: Leeks in Vinaigrette, Oeufs Mayo, Figs with Thyme, and a few surprising offerings such as Saffron Rabbit Stew with Cucumbers. Sure, the terrines, the mother sauces, and a host of recipes for eel, tripe, sweetbreads, kidneys and the like which may seem out of order today but are clear evidence of a cuisine that cooked everything available. Nose to tail!

A few years ago, before it closed in 2024, I dined at La Grenouille, the final bastion of classic French cooking in NYC. I loved the small red-lampshade lighting on each table. I relished the massive floral displays. I ordered the Grand Marnier Soufflé. And, yes, I loved the service although all of this came at a fairly stiff price. Was this nostalgia? No, it was the pleasure of dining in an establishment that knew its business from the food to the space to the service. After too many flights on Spirit Airlines, one finally settles into a first-class seat on Lufthansa and the relief brings tears to the eyes.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot about French cooking which I find mysterious or lacking. A wholesale disregard for spices including chilies. A fanatical love of mustard which, in my opinion, can ruin a tender salad or leeks vinaigrette. The use of gobs of cream and butter where a simpler, fresher sauce would be in order. (I recently watched a chef in Paris make his version of Normandy chicken with mushrooms and apples in an Armagnac cream sauce, adding at least a pound of butter. It was good but the quantity of butter reminded me of heavy artillery. Incoming!)

I threw off the yoke of French cooking decades ago, especially during the Milk Street years which have opened my eyes to everything from Somalian Chicken Soup to Mole Rojo in Oaxaca to the baking of Romania. Yet cooking is not like packing a small suitcase – you don’t have to discard one pair of shoes to fit another. That culinary suitcase is infinite in size like the wine jug from Greek myth. Keep it all; throw nothing out.

Andrew Zimmern agrees. In a recent Substack he claims, “After years of austerity menus and moralized eating, maybe America’s appetite has returned to the tablecloth. French cooking … meticulous, sensual, unapologetic … is a standard by which all pleasure can be measured. But don’t overthink it. Enjoy it.”

The culinary freight train will continue down the tracks, picking up the complex culinary offerings of the Philippines and southern India to the foods of Malaysia and the small villages of southern Mexico, to Transylvania, West Africa, and Hmong cuisine and much more. But let’s not forget the French omelet and the simple vinaigrette and the lessons of Auguste Escoffier.

As someone once said, “It’s all good.”