Snobby French waiters the world over may have less reason to turn up their noses. S. Pellegrino's annual list of the world's 50 best restaurants is out, and the traditional seat of culinary excellence fared remarkably poor, with no restaurants among the top 10 and only three in the top 20.
Last year, France placed two restaurants in the top 10. By contrast, this year Spain garnered the No. 2, 4, 5 and 9 spots, while the U.S. got Nos. 7, 8 and 10.
The best France could do in the latest rankings was No. 11 for Le Chateaubriand in Paris. Noma of Denmark grabbed the top spot, while the highest-ranked U.S. restaurant was Chicago's Alinea, at No. 7.
Peter Kreiner, director of the restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark, displays his best restaurant award on April 27, 2010. Casper Christoffersen, AFP / Getty Images Noma, a restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark, tops S. Pellegrino's list of best restaurants for 2010. Here, Noma director Peter Kreiner displays the award. For years, French cuisine was the epitome of good food, from three-star restaurants to peasant baguettes, bountiful wines and legendary Camembert. But over the past two decades, some have begun to wonder if the bastion of Old World excellence epitomized by such legendary figures as Auguste Escoffier has begun to crumble amid today's changing tastes.
The first major chink in France's gastronomic armor was exposed in 1976, when a Francophile British wine merchant named Steven Spurrier organized a blind taste test between a selection of California and French wines. In a huge upset, California wines won in every category.
Since then, chefs from countries like England and Spain have gained notoriety, but France's star has started to fade. Throughout the '90s and into this century, American tastes matured as farmers markets expanded and celebrity chef culture gave a new generation a reason to get in front of the stove. Meanwhile, France seemed to be moving toward McDonald's and microwaves.
As early as 1991, The New York Times wondered whether France was on its way down from the top of the food world, and in 1997 The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik wrote an article asking, "Is there a crisis in French cooking?"
In his recent book, "Au Revoir All That: Food, Wine and the End of France," Slate wine blogger and admitted Francophile Michael Steinberger examines that question, chronicling what he perceives as the ultimate decline of French pre-eminence in the culinary world. Steinberger argues that a precarious economic environment, coupled with modern, high-speed globalization, is behind the fall from grace.
"Governments of the left and the right have served up the same toxic stew -- anemic growth, chronically high unemployment, stagnant living standards, crippling levels of regulation and taxation, and the culinary arts have suffered grievously as a result," Steinberger told Zesterdaily in December. France, he notes, became McDonald's second most profitable market in 2007.
Some, however, are less inclined to doom and gloom, and question whether a French culinary tradition that survived centuries of revolution and war has truly been licked by modern globalization.
At food and wine blog "Waitrose," Felipe Fernandez-Armesto writes, "One country can no longer dominate the tables of the world, or even the West, but centuries of passion are not easily effaced. The French have accommodated every crisis of the past, without ever compromising on quality. At the world's table today, their hegemony may be unsustainable, but their excellence is unshaken."
