{"id":76,"date":"2018-11-09T11:44:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T11:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/2018-10-30-le-clarence-the-return-of-french-fine-dining\/"},"modified":"2024-03-03T15:47:16","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T15:47:16","slug":"2018-10-30-le-clarence-the-return-of-french-fine-dining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gastromondiale.com\/2018-10-30-le-clarence-the-return-of-french-fine-dining\/","title":{"rendered":"Le Clarence: The Return of French Fine Dining?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
This relatively new high end dining restaurant in Paris has all kinds of features we love to hate. It has two gorgeous small salons<\/em> equipped with red velvet chairs, a glittering forest of crystal glasses, an armory of silver cutlery, beautiful candles, and very professional well-dressed servers who effortlessly build a rapport with diners without being patronizing and too intrusive. This is all very anachronistic in an age where most of us, including French restaurant critics, feel threatened by \u201cla grande cuisine fran\u00e7aise dans sa plus belle tradition<\/em>.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Possibly there has never been an era in history, with so many diners with some tie to social media, who take themselves seriously while displaying an inverse relationship between knowledge and their inflated sense of self-worth. In contrast, the so called \u201cleading 50 restaurants of the world\u201d, with chefs who are \u201ccreative artists\u201d rather than \u201cartisans\/ouvrier<\/em>\u201d, now serve a long series of incomplete \u201cideas\u201d that are beautiful to photograph for Instagram, with waiters who have memorized lectures on the source of each ingredient. Because these restaurants know how to cater to these \u201cinfluencers\u201d and \u201cmedia personalities,\u201d they have succeeded in creating a demand for almost anything that they cook, independent of taste, as long as the dishes look good to photograph. Because the globe-trotting \u201cinfluencers\u201d have been paid to promote restaurants that are sponsored by business conglomerates, the overall result has been the decline of true fine-end destinations, in general, and \u201cla grande cuisine francaise<\/em>,\u201d in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But \u201cla grande cuisine francaise<\/em>\u201d is not yet gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How else can one explain the sudden arrival of Le Clarence<\/strong> onto the dining scene in Paris? It is really rowing against the tide. With some possible exceptions, there are not too many Michelin three star or top 20 restaurants in the Western world which cook without a nod to Japan, to Kaiseki, and to Nordic fads. Luxury ingredients, such as caviar, lobster, foie gras, are on the unofficial black list in favor of ingredients supposedly foraged from the forest. There is nothing wrong with this, except that we are witnessing the transformation of chefs from kitchen professionals to media oriented, story-telling narrators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n