From the instructions of the Lord to Moses and Aaron, it followed that one could not eat pork or hare, but could eat locusts, and it was not easy for the crude Europeans to come to terms with this. It is now that on the website of the omnivorous Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, they seriously offer recipes for preparing the locusts devouring Africa (it is claimed, in particular, that “the dried legs of the insect have a particularly pleasant taste”), but in those ignorant days everything was different: for mockery, one was beaten.
The appearance of spices and, as a result, a variety of smells and taste sensations turned the world of gastronomy upside down. Every self-respecting household already had a spice set, and for a pound of ginger people agreed to give a sheep, and exotic pepper became more expensive than gold. Arabs sold peppers individually. It was also a triumph of Islamic culture, for the culinary habits of advanced Muslims - from table aesthetics to the sweetness of dishes - the nascent gourmets of Europe often adopted blindly. The high cost of spices increased social differentiation, but it gave those who served the pot the opportunity to create.
In the French “Encyclopedia” - a cult work of the Enlightenment, written under the editorship of Diderot for almost 30 years until 1780, the constant assistant of the main erudite, the Chevalier de Jaucourt, already categorically generalized: “The art of chefs is almost entirely reduced to the ability to use seasonings, and this is characteristic of all civilized countries... Most of these seasonings are harmful to health... Nevertheless, it must be stated that, by and large, only savages can be satisfied with the products of nature in their pure form, eaten without seasonings.”
The first and still the best restaurant guide, “Michelin”, was published by the brothers Andre and Edouard much later - only in 1900, two years after they founded the family company for the production of tires. However, the three-star system for assessing the merits of cuisine created by these enterprising people is still used today. One star means “a very good restaurant in its category”, two - “remarkable cuisine, worth deviating from the planned route and going there”, three - “exceptional cuisine, worthy of a separate purposeful trip”. In reality, one star promises instant recognition for both the restaurant and its chef, two - loud fame, three - often a resonance, like from the awarding of the Nobel Prize.
Having visited about 40 starred European restaurants, I can confidently state that the number of “celestial bodies” awarded to them does not always correspond to quality. For example, some of the most vivid memories I still have are from the establishment “Es Racó d'es Teix” in the picturesque Majorcan village of Deià, where, with the help of a charming wife-assistant, a chef with a completely non-Spanish name, Josef Sauerschel, cheerfully performs his sacred rites. Two years have already passed since I was there, but, alas, Josef still has only one star. And the formal “draw” of the restaurant “Auberge de l'Ill” in the deeply sleeping Alsatian village of Illhaeusern, near Strasbourg, and the “Waterside Inn” devoid of a spark in the British culinary Mecca - Bray-on-Thames - on the contrary, seems excessively stretched. Yes, both are off the beaten path (this seems to be a distinctive feature of Michelin's favorites) and on the banks of lazily flowing rivers, both have three stars and French chefs, but both the ambiance and the refinement of the dishes differ like heaven and earth.
Believe me, I do not wish harm to Alain Roux, whose legendary uncle Albert, the boss of the London restaurant “Gavroche”, undoubtedly deservedly received the Legion of Honor from the French ministers on September 9, but simply the “mousse of frog legs in the style of Paul Haeberlin” is the milestone that the wizard of Bray has not yet conquered. Therefore, it is impossible to understand why in the list of the 50 best restaurants in the world, published in April by the British magazine “Restaurant” based on a survey of 600 experts, “Auberge de l'Ill” ranks 37th, and “Waterside Inn” ranks 19th. As, by the way, is the absence from this list of the Luxembourg restaurant “Lia Linster”. Its owner, a woman of ample forms, who without much hesitation named the establishment after herself, has long been claiming the title of the most authoritative female chef, and this is generally a rare phenomenon. I am not a supporter of feminism, fashionable among effeminate men and ugly women, but I would have added at least one star to her. Really, deservedly.
That the “Michelin” guide was born in France is natural, for in no other country has Haute cuisine ever been given such importance as here. The story of how in 1671 the nervous chef of the Princes of Condé, François Vatel, pierced his heart with a sword for fear that fresh fish would not be delivered in time for the meal of King Louis XIV, who was visiting the Château de Chantilly, has become classic. But suicide ended the life in 1966, almost 300 years later, of another Frenchman, Alain Zick, when he learned that his Parisian restaurant “Relais de Porquerolles” had lost one star. And in 2003, Bernard Loiseau decided to follow in their footsteps, whose Burgundian restaurant “Côte d'Or” was downgraded in the classification of another prestigious guide. By an ironic twist of fate, Loiseau, who was awarded in 1995 the same Legion of Honor, is credited with the words: “We sell dreams. We are merchants of happiness...”
And where else could a story like the one that took place a few days before the death of French President François Mitterrand have happened? It is so colorful that I will reproduce it in full.
There is a little bird called the ortolan bunting. From tail to beak it measures no more than 15 centimeters. But it is this bird that was mentioned as an exquisite delicacy by the French writer Marcel Proust, his English colleague Henry Fielding, and many others. In France, hunting ortolans, buying them, and eating them is forbidden, but this law is regularly violated. The guarantor of the French constitution also disregarded it a few days before his death on January 8, 1996. The president already knew he was about to die of prostate cancer, and on December 31 he decided to hold a farewell banquet. Mitterrand and his friends were served four dishes: Marennes oysters, foie gras, roast capon, and ortolan bunting.
The traditional method of preparing and consuming ortolans is barbaric. The captured birds are kept in dark boxes or cages, where they hastily and blankly peck at grain. (Incidentally, foie gras is obtained just as cruelly: ducks and geese are force-fed to enlarge their livers to the maximum possible size. The record weight for a goose liver is 2 kilograms.) When the ortolans have swollen to unnatural proportions, they are drowned in cognac, plucked, roasted, their heads are cut off (or bitten off), and they are eaten whole, bones and all, with a napkin draped over the little bodies – to hide the shameful deed from God. Usually, even for confirmed gourmands, eating more than one ortolan is considered excessive. But on the day of his last dinner, Mitterrand ate two. He ate nothing more after that and died a week later.
Many believe that the aforementioned list of the 50 best restaurants is highly subjective, with an Anglo-Saxon bias. The reason: it included 14 British restaurants and only 10 French ones. Yet in Paris alone there are about a dozen three-star establishments and roughly 20 two-star ones, whereas in 2003 the entire United Kingdom had only ten two-star and just two three-star restaurants, both of which specialized in French cuisine.
The cunning Talleyrand, who had time to be not only prime minister but also France's ambassador to Great Britain, is credited with the apt words: “In England there are three sauces and 360 religions; this is the exact opposite of what we have in France: three religions and 360 sauces.” And he seems not to have sinned against the truth. English cuisine is simple, not to say primitive, and is hardly likely to be given an appealing conceptual description. It is quite possible that this is at least partly due to religion. Unlike the austere Puritans and even the moderate Anglicans, Catholics (and here the French top the list) have always been much more relaxed about the thesis that gluttony leads to lust and ultimately to the damnation of the soul, for from childhood they found consolation in the doctrine of original sin and cleansing confession, which allowed them to continue sinning, at least in small matters. The classic question of Charles de Gaulle, “How can you govern a country that has 246 varieties of cheese?”, would probably never have occurred to any British prime minister. On the shores of Albion, only whiskey varieties are counted in such numbers, and even those are Scottish.
True, the British now have a real reason for pride, because the establishment of their homegrown innovator Heston Blumenthal, “The Fat Duck”, still in that same Bray-on-Thames, which only last year received its third star, has been recognized as the best on the planet.
Blumenthal opened “The Fat Duck” 10 years ago by converting a pub of the same name. A talented autodidact, he was captivated by culinary mastery when, at the age of 16, his parents took him to the three-star Michelin restaurant “L'Oustau de Baumanière” in Provence. Later, Heston recalled that he had been indelibly impressed by the sommelier with a thick mustache and leather apron, the hypnotic cheese trolley, and the waiter's filigree carving of a lamb leg right at the dinner table. “I was completely captivated by this process and said to myself: ‘This is it, what I was looking for,’” he recalls. “And now I strive to convey those sensations to others.”
Heston's application of the achievements of Swiss chemical laboratories to cooking quickly led to his work being dubbed “molecular gastronomy,” and himself as a “culinary Frankenstein” or “Salvador Dalí of the kitchen” (depending on whether the critics liked the food or not). How are ideas born? Here is an example. Blumenthal discovers that matching “notes” of chemical substances are found both in duck liver and jasmine flowers. A series of experiments – and “foie gras with jasmine sauce” appears on the menu to the applause of gourmands.
But not everyone likes this “molecular gastronomy,” whose father is in fact not Blumenthal but the Catalan Ferran Adrià (more on him later). The highly respected German restaurant critic Wolfram Ziebeck from the magazine “Die Zeit,” after visiting “The Fat Duck,” mockingly plucked it apart to the last detail, concluding: “Any nonsense can be justified somehow. We call it progress.”
I, however, was left with mixed impressions. On the one hand, I experienced quite a few pleasant moments while trying dishes with frightening names, such as "grape snails in oatmeal porridge", which had turned green from the fennel mixed in, or "sardine sorbet on toast". On the other hand, a thin strip of unknown consistency with a strong aftertaste of oak bark, provocatively added to one of the appetizers, which was supposed to dissolve in the mouth and evoke "forgotten sensations of childhood", alas, evoked nothing and seemed somewhat contrived. And my wife almost vomited from "white chocolate with black caviar". But perhaps these are simply our stereotypes, which are immune to rapid destruction? After all, when in 1925 the brothers Melkum and Musheg Petrosyan, who had come from Russia, held a tasting of luxurious Caspian caviar at the World Exhibition in Paris, this delicacy, unseen in France until then, also caused nausea in many. And are they not interconnected, Haute cuisine and vomiting? After all, as the French gastronome Grimod de la Reynière wrote at the beginning of the 19th century, "a true gourmet never goes to a meal without an emetic; this is the fastest and safest way to avoid indigestion."