To be sure, it is easy enough to make fun of nouvelle cuisine affectation. Everyone who has experienced it in restaurants were it is practised, wether in France, England, elsewhere in Europe (in Holland and Italy I have had some quite bizarre nouvelle cuisine meals set before me), or in the United States, has his or her own story of the five green beans sitting lonely on one side of a huge white plate, three tepid chicken livers avec ses quelques feuilles de salade nine inches distant on the opposite edge. The ineffably precious style of plate presentation developed by the current generation of chefs and restaurateurs is of course - and this is something which neither its admirers nor its critics have so far as I know pointed out - nothing at all to do with cuisine but everything to do with portion control. Take away those huge and inappropiate plates with their finicky and often inept arrangements, put the cooked food back where it belongs in serving dishes to be offered or to be set in front of customers, and French restaurant cooking would, I think, very quickly regain its faltering status, and with it its diminished spirit of generosity.
1983
