French Cuisine

So much has been said and written about French Cuisine, that when the time came to write about this wonderful type of cuisine, to introduce you to the restaurants in Bogotá that serve this kind of cuisine, I’m speechless. I have so much to say about it and I don’t know where to start.

Anyway, cooking and eating is a whole experience for the French. All come together, they really enjoy cooking as much as eating, and they love to share this experience at the table with friends and family. It’s a cuisine to enjoy!

I decided to start with a history about Gallic Cuisine to understand its importance, influences and characteristics. This cuisine boasts its own rich history, which has evolved from the Middle Age to our days.

It has been revered as one of the world’s most refined cuisines

In the Middle Age meals were used to be served all at once and in an extravagant way, not only because of the amounts of food but also for their magnificent way to display it. Meals consisted of spiced meats such as pork, beef, poultry and fish, determined by the ingredients available on the season.

During the 15th and 16th siècle, Gallic cuisine was greatly influenced by the gastronomy advances in Italy. When one Italian Princess got married to a French Princes who became a King, she brought along with her Italian chefs who in turn introduced Italian culinary practices to the French court. Even though the gastronomy practices of France and Italy have many important differences, French cuisine owes much of their culinary development to the Italian chefs of this time.

After that, between the 16th and 18th siècle, Paris became the central hub of culture and economic activity, and the most highly qualified chefs and cooks looked for a place in the city. By this time the food production and cooking in France were organized by guilds over the territory.

During the 17th and 18th siècle there was an important development around the “Haute cuisine” in France, based on recipes by a chef named La Varenne, who was the author of the first “French Cookbook”. Unlike the cooking styles of the middle Age, La Varenne cookbook contained recipes more modest, focused on the ingredients and less in the abundance of the meals. This trend has marked the French cuisine since then.

With the changes made by the French Revolution the guilds were no more in place and any French chef could produce and sell any type of culinary product. These lead to a kind of enlightenment within the French food industry.

By the 18th and 19th siècle one chef named Marie-Antoine Carême based its cooking around the development of what he called “mother sauces”. Carême codified the four primary families of French sauces that form the basis of classic French cooking to this day: espagnole, vélouté, allemande and béchamel. Thanks to Carême’s books, French chefs working at home and abroad had a basic, shared vocabulary to refer to in their cooking.

Then, the modernization of the “haute cuisine” started by the end of the 19th siècle and the beginning of the 20th; Georges Auguste Escoffier was the main player in this modernization. Escoffier was a chef, owner of many restaurants and a culinary writer. He based most of his movement on Carême’s recipes. By simplifying as well as adding his own touches to the Carême’s recipes, Escoffier developed a new modern French Cuisine. He also developed a system called “brigade system” to manage and organize a professional kitchen. He divided the kitchen area in five sections, with personnel in charge of every section and with a specific kind of meal dish to prepare. With this system, some professions were born within the culinary world as the “garde manger” in charge of cold dishes, the “entremettier” that prepare starches and vegetables, the “rôtisseur” who prepare roasted, grilled and fried dishes, the “saucier” in charge of preparing sauces and soups, and the “pâtissier” who is in charge of preparing all pastries and desserts. This reorganization turned professional kitchens into more efficient spaces.

Since the days of Escoffier there have been many changes in the anatomy of French Cuisine. Over time new techniques have evolved, and chefs have become more inventive.

Today the French meal structure is divided into “Le petit déjeuner” or breakfast, “Le déjeuner” or lunch, and “Le dîner” or dinner.

Some popular French dishes include: Ratatouille, a vegetable dish baked on tomato sauce; Blanquette de veau, a Blanquette of veal; Coq au vin, a rooster with vegetables cooked in a red wine sauce; Bouillabaisse, a fish soup; Boudin blanc, a delicate flavored sausage.

Wine is a beverage very important in the French cuisine, and an essential item in French meals. In many cases a different wine is paired with each course in a meal, and each wine is picked depending on what is being served for each course.

As we see, French cuisine owes its glory to many excellent chefs who devoted their life to develop new ingredients, new recipes or new ways to cook them. That’s why French Cuisine is where it is right now.  And in Colombia, also we have a good list of restaurants where there chefs devotes their lives to this exquisite cuisine.

So please come and choose from our list of Restaurants that offer French Cuisine in Bogota and enjoy the experience.

The List

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