{"id":33368,"date":"2019-06-24T09:41:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T07:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/2019\/06\/24\/the-french-table-service-3-3\/"},"modified":"2022-11-26T14:19:06","modified_gmt":"2022-11-26T13:19:06","slug":"the-french-table-service-3-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/2019\/06\/24\/the-french-table-service-3-3\/","title":{"rendered":"The French table service (3\/3)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The gastronomic meal of the French, a figure of the intangible heritage of humanity, is the heritage of an ancestral and unknown know-how, which has been refined throughout history.<\/span><\/h3>\n\n

By Jean-Robert Pitte<\/span><\/h4>\n\n

(Continued)<\/p>\n\n

If the guests are not too numerous, it is also possible to cut up large pieces such as leg of lamb, turkey, roast beef, lobster or lobster after presentation on a pedestal table or side table. On the other hand, the fish in Bellevue are presented whole to the guests. Desserts can be placed on a serving tray at the beginning of the meal. Their decorative refinement is of the best effect. This is still practiced today sometimes with the croquembouches set pieces at weddings. Large red marble sideboards, inserted in the walls, are still visible in the blue dining room of James de Rothschild at the castle of Ferri\u00e8res (Seine-et-Marne), which has become a restaurant dining room after a few decades of neglect. <\/p>\n\n

The\nrestaurant practices have changed significantly in recent years. In the\ninns and bistros, it has long been customary to place the food on the\nin serving dishes, often oval to take up less space, and\nto let the customers serve themselves. This is still practiced in the\ntraditional houses such as Lipp, La Coupole or Balzar in Paris. Only\nthe large whole pieces were cut on a pedestal table, sometimes heating and\nwith a silver lid, as still exists at Le Train Bleu, the\nmythical Belle Epoque restaurant at the Gare de Lyon. In the restaurants\nthe maitre d’s presented the dishes to the guests, and then\narranged the dishes on a plate on a sideboard before placing them on the table.\nthis one in front of the customer. <\/p>\n\n

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Today,\nchefs have increasingly adopted the practice of serving each guest at\nthe plate. Their tenors have traveled extensively and have long been received\nwith generosity by their Japanese counterparts. They certainly taught them the\nof the French cuisine that they have perfectly assimilated and\nperform with talent at home or in France where some have settled.\nThe French cooks, for their part, were fascinated by the rules\nculinary arts and food presentation in Japan. The art of cutting, the\ncolors, the arrangement in plates or bowls of all sizes and shapes, the\nall colors, the techniques of cooking gave them the idea of\nto inspire once they are back in front of their ovens. They also acquired the\ntaste of raw fish, soy sauce, wasabi<\/em>, shisso<\/em>, yuzu<\/em>, macha<\/em>, wagyu<\/em> beef, etc.\nAlas, they have learned nothing of the aspects of Japanese culture that underlie this\nstyle, in particular the religious foundations inspired by the Shinto way and\nof Buddha, the aesthetic principles among which the calligraphy\nand many other subtleties. So they imitate, but in such a superficial way\nthat it is often distressing and laughable for the Japanese. They mix, by\nfor example, a dozen or more ingredients in a recipe, having a thousand\nflower petals, grass fluff and various brimborions with tweezers,\ndecorating plates with sweeps of spices, droplets or commas of\ncolorful sauces, while in most of the tiny and delicate dishes\nof the Japanese kaiseki <\/em>, hardly enters\nmore than three components. These chefs are keen to sign their plates, which\ntakes so long to compose that customers wait a long time between\ndishes. As a result, the room staff – who no longer need to be as\ncompetent than yesterday, nor so numerous – is reduced to depositing the dishes, sometimes\nafter lifting a bell, repeating at length the list of all the\ncomponents. The sommeliers are tearing their hair out, because no wine accompanies\nwith harmony these gustatory cacophonies. <\/p>\n\n

The\nindustrialists and craftsmen of the arts of the table, porcelain makers and goldsmiths\nhave recently been giving their all with unequal success. The plates\nare often wildly imaginative, those of the Jules Verne at the Tower\nEiffel, for example. Plates and bowls of all shapes and sizes,\ngrains and colors succeed them. The cutlery is sometimes of a grip\ndifficult, the worst being reached by the too often heavy meat knives\nand unstable. The glasses have become huge, perched on legs\ncomparable to stilettos: they allow the sommeliers to empty\nquickly the bottles and to renew the order, which allows\nthe financial balance of the institution, taking into account the personnel costs in\nFrance.<\/p>\n\n

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Thankfully,\nthese failings are not generalized and are only fashion effects. They\nwill pass and you just have to choose your restaurants to avoid them. It does not\nThere is no question of freezing French cuisine in its style of the past few years.\n1950s, but leaders must understand that innovation means having\nsolid foundations – the equivalent of music theory and harmony for composers\nof music – to be humble and above all to be driven by the desire to\nto please. Brillat-Savarin said it so well: “Invite someone,\nis to take care of his happiness all the time he is under our roof”.\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The gastronomic meal of the French, a figure of the intangible heritage of humanity, is the heritage of an ancestral and unknown know-how, which has been refined throughout history. By…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":31608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[970,1279,792,1135,1023,1281,1280],"powerkit_post_featured":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Train-Bleu-Restaurant-de\u0301coupe-en-salle.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33369,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33368\/revisions\/33369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33368"},{"taxonomy":"powerkit_post_featured","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/powerkit_post_featured?post=33368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}