What is Haute Cuisine ?
 

We are from a small town in Idaho but I have read a few times the term "Haute Cuisine" could you please tell me what it is.

Posh nosh.

Literally translated it means "High Cooking", meaning miniscule portions, beautifully presented.

Ok thank you. The more "Haute" the less food and higher the price. I understand now.

minuscule portions, huge (square) plates. By the end of the meal you pay a lot of money and have no idea what you were eating.

I am sure the "foodies" here are arming for war because of the replies but I would add, in some cases, you should think about the amount of time it took to make that "drizzling" design on everything.

I also suggest you use your tongue to get the drizzle off the edge of the plate...you know, that large part where there isn't any food.

Haute Cuisine is a cuisine that most locals never eat nor can most afford to eat - eschew it for what typical French say eat IMO

Dinner Haute Cuisine style then when you leave you need to eat a real dinner.

Think beet foam.

Haute cuisine has nothing to do with drizzling. It usually refers to French cooking based on classic recipes (Escoffier) and served in sem-formal or formal surroundings. This type of cooking is very labor intensive and uses high-quality and often expensive ingeredients, which accounts in part for the high prices. Examples include Taillevent in Paris.

Actually, I believe it was "nouvelle cuisine" (new cuisine) that is associated with small portions, usually at a high price. Haute cuisine really is simply about very high quality food and service delivered to a very, very, high standard. It doesn't necessary involve small portions or high prices. I acknowledge that sometimes portions are small because restauranteurs know they can get away with it because clients are willing to pay for "haute cuisine". But in my experience, smallish portions are normal in France and often occur in restaurants with 1, 2 or 3 Michelin stars because: a) there are multiple courses; and b) the food is very rich, so if you ate a large portion you'd feel sick.

My husband and I recently ate dinner at a 2* restaurant (Richard Coutanceau) and the next day at a 1* restaurant, Les Flots, run one of Richard Coutanceau's sons, in La Rochelle. I highly recommend both, if you ever go to France, as a relatively affordable way to find out what haute cuisine is all about. At Coutanceau, we ordered prix fixe meals that cost about 45 euros per person for 3 courses. Seems like a lot of money. But, in addition to those three courses, we also were served a trio of amuse-bouches (a mouthpleasers), bite-sized servings that constituted pre-appetizers. After our appetizers, main course and dessert, we were served a tray of chocolate treats and cookies with our coffee. So, in effect, 5 courses in all. The meal, the environment and the service were wonderful.

We were expecting possibly snooty waiters who would try to oversell us on wine and treat us with disdain. Nothing could be further from the truth. The hostess (Madame Coutanceau) greeted us at the door and seated us at a good table. Thereafter, we were served by several waiters (junior and senior) with impeccable skills and very pleasant manners. The sommelier suggested a wine that was 8 euros less than the one we had provisionally proposed to him as suitable for our meal. The entire experience - food, environment and service - is what haute cuisine means.

<<We are from a small town in Idaho>>

Think of it as a loaded baked potato - only smaller.

(eks - don't make it sound appealing - reservations are hard enough to get as it is)

Would it be proper to say Haute Cuisine is the opposite of rustic?

thereyet

We call it "toy food" -- high style, small portions, sauces drizzled all over the place, wierd stuff. Give me real home cooking any time.

It's not all about small portions and drizzling.

Wikipedia has a good definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haute_cuisine

thereyet: It's the opposite of rustic in the sense that a lot has probably been done to the food before it lands on your plate (deboned, concentrated, converted to foam, strained, reduced, restructured, etc). So, usually it's not very simple. A lot of rustic food, although not all of it (e.g. paella), is simple.

But haute cuisine often shares with rustic food a very close association with terroir (land). A chef might produce meals that are based on his or her family recipes and that use almost exclusively locally resourced ingredients, provided by local growers and producers whose livelihood is supported by the restaurant.

"Haute cuisine has nothing to do with drizzling"

What????? Do you mean to tell me all these years I've been paying for beet foam with drizzle that wasn't really Haute Cuisine?

What was it, then..child finger painting???? LOL

Many of you (USNR especially) are confusing haute cuisine with nouvelle cuisine. The old-style haute cuisine dishes..quenelles de brochet, homard a la amoricaine, to name just two that come to my mind right now, were not served in tiny portions, nor was anything drizzled on a plate. There were no toy portions or anything strange, unless you consider sweetbreads or frog legs to be "wierd."

KateW..thank you for posting more about Coutanceau in La Rochelle; I will be there next week and have put it on my list for dinner; it had been recommended here but I did not realize that the prices are not as stratospheric as I had feared.

ekscrunchy: If you want to go to Coutanceau next week, you should make a reservation now. You can do it on the restaurant's website at www.coutanceauonline.com. Note that the last weekend in May includes Pentecost, a holiday. On the one hand, the restaurant will be open on Sunday 27 May (it isn't usually open on Sundays). On the other hand, people have already started flocking to La Rochelle, a popular summer destination. We booked 3 weeks in advance for a Saturday night in March (it probably wasn't necessary to book that far in advance, but the sooner the better).

Oh boy! Thank you. I will be there this coming Sunday and Monday, 27 and 28th. I will write to them TODAY; do you think I should also ask my hotel to reserve for me?

It's really easy to do it on the restaurant's website. Click on the restaurant's name toward the bottom of the page (there's a list of 4) and on the next page there is a button on the left that says reservations. The form is in English. I got a confirmation back by email within 24 hours.

If you can't get a dinner reservation, try for lunch. If you can't get lunch or dinner, try to reserve at Les Flots (one of the sons' restaurants); it was excellent, too. Good luck.

"I also suggest you use your tongue to get the drizzle off the edge of the plate...you know, that large part where there isn't any food." - oh, no, Dukey, this is so low class! In a haute restaurant, a piece of bread is used instead of a tongue!

And remember not to use your sleve as a napkin! This is what the chef's coat is for!