Often reduced to the French gastronomy, this title values more widely a French cultural practice: the fact of celebrating joyful moments around a meal meeting several criteria. In France, gathering around a good lunch or dinner is indeed an art!
Often reduced to the French gastronomy, this title values more widely a French cultural practice: the fact of celebrating joyful moments around a meal meeting several criteria. In France, gathering around a good lunch or dinner is indeed an art!
If the UNESCO has long recognized the aesthetic and historical value of several French monuments, it is in the category of intangible heritage that it has classified what makes France as famous in the world as the Eiffel Tower or the Mont St Michel: its gastronomy or, more specifically, the way to appreciate it here. For this title obtained in 2010, the gastronomic meal of the French is indeed distinguished for its different components:
(ideally local), the realization of a complete menu (aperitif, starter, meat or fish dish, cheese and dessert, digestive) and, unavoidable in the land of oenology, the attention given to the alliance between the dishes and the wines.
Last ingredient, what we could call here "the cherry on the cake": the shared pleasure.
If gustatory satisfaction is at the heart of this meeting of individuals or groups, the fact of being together and living a warm moment is indeed the main objective.
If in France this social practice aims mainly to create links and to keep alive a rich culinary heritage, at the international level it has other virtues that this Unesco classification favors, such as the support to agriculture and to the agri-food market or, more indirectly, the development of tourism.
Moreover, the idea of using gastronomy as a factor of influence of France in the world is not new: in 2015, the operation "Goût de France / Good France" already invited restaurants around the world to offer, on the same day, a meal based on the model of the French gastronomic meal and, as early as 1912, the first star chef Auguste Escoffier proposed his famous Epicurean dinners gathering (in France only, as globalization had not yet been born) up to 10,000 guests in 147 different cities.
Since then, his successors have spread this rich French tradition everywhere, including Yannick Alléno in Marrakech and Beijing, Guy Savoy in Las Vegas or Joël Robuchon in London, Bangkok and Montreal. Great starred chefs to embody a feature of French cultural identity: we couldn't dream of better ambassadors!
Valérie from Comme des Français
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