The Food of France

France and Asia Fall in Love Again - The Moment Blog - NYTimes.com

Food October 2, 2009, 2:43 pm For the Moment | France and Asia Fall in Love Again By Alexander Lobrano Guilo-GuiloMeg Zimbeck Guilo-Guilo, one of the several Parisian restaurants with a talented Japanese chef. This week, the Paris food writer Alexander Lobrano, the author of “Hungry for Paris” and the European correspondent for Gourmet, joins the T table to share his thoughts (and tips) on dining. Read his previous posts here. In Paris, this is the season of wasabi, matcha and yuzu. If many countries are having a major influence on contemporary French cooking, including Morocco, Italy, Spain and even the United States (check out Frenchie, where you’ll easily detect the tasty influence of a stint at New York’s Gramercy Tavern on the talented young chef Gregory Marchand, or Rice & Fish, where some boys from San Francisco are seducing Parisians with California-style sushi), young French chefs are completely besotted with Asia.

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2009 in France - yet another great 9? | Tasting Notes & Wine Reviews from Jancis Robinson

Any analysis of the outstanding vintages of 20th-century French wine – 1929, 1949, 1959 and 1989 for red bordeaux, 1999, 1989, 1969, 1959, 1949, 1929 and 1919 for red burgundy – suggests that years ending in nine tend to have special properties. This year, 2009, looks, so far, set fair to continue this phenomenon in virtually all French wine regions.

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For the Moment | Finding Pearls in Paris - The Moment Blog - NYTimes.com

Hemlines may rise and fall, but one thing in Paris never changes during the fall, and that’s the heart-warming site of mustachioed men in indigo aprons and rubber boots shucking oysters on the sidewalk outside of the many restaurants that serve these much-loved bivalves. They are never better than they are between October and February.

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Fancy French Restaurants Serve Up Economy Meals: Paris Dining - Bloomberg.com

If Paris is a moveable feast, it’s becoming a more affordable one, thanks to the economic slowdown.

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Le Fooding takes New York.

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A Warning on Climate Change - The Pour Blog - NYTimes.com

Climate change poses a critical threat to French wine regions, and Burgundy in particular, according to a new report from the environmental organization Greenpeace.

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Wines of The Times - Wine Tasting - The Languedoc Raises Its Bar - NYTimes.com

For years, I’ve heard talk about the transformation of the Languedoc, a region that for so long was best known for supplying the rest of France with cheap red wine that only occasionally rose to the level of mediocre. As the French began to consume less wine, and the competition for the inexpensive market has grown, Languedoc has had to undergo a painful evolution that is far from complete.

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Paris Kitchens Go Local - TIME

The ranks of the locavore movement, which promotes the use of locally grown produce, have been swollen in recent years by green chefs hoping to reduce their carbon footprints. But in famously gastronomic France, the trend has been surprisingly slow to catch on. In Paris, where restaurant menus boast langoustine from Madagascar and caviar from Iran, few gourmets imagine it possible to compose a meal from produce grown within 50 miles of the capital. But today, born-and-bred Parisian chef Yannick Alléno and a handful of others are doing just that. Their rhetoric stresses exclusivity and the revival of forgotten flavors rather than the reduction of greenhouse gases, but the end result is the same: both diners and the environment benefit.

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A ‘French Chef’ Whose Appeal Doesn’t Translate - NYTimes.com

Julia Child may have been America’s best-known “French chef,” but here in Paris few know her fabled cookbooks, let alone her name.

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AFP: The manga that poured French wine into Asia

Yuko and Shin Kibayashi, a fashionable sister-brother duo publishing under the pseudonym Tadashi Agi, created “Kami no Shizuki” (The Drops of God), a phenomenally successful manga series that has brought wine to subway commuters across Asia, and sparked a wine boom.

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How the bubbly burst - The Independent

For years, champagne has defied the slump in other French wines and expanded its sales, especially in China and Russia but also in one of its oldest and biggest markets, Britain. But now the champagne bubble has burst. There are over one billion bottles of champagne – almost three years’ global supply – piled up in store.

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French government to help wine exports - Forbes.com

The French government is promising export guarantees to help France’s wine producers struggling to keep up sales abroad amid the economic downturn, the agriculture minister said Tuesday.

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French food is past its sell-by-date - Telegraph

Sacre bleu. Some ros boeuf has claimed that British restaurants are better than the French.

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French vintners have to take more account of the habits of modern drinkers if they want to survive the current crisis, but they should not go as far as making fruity drinks with a little alcohol, a leading critic believes.

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Antique Dung Is Secret Element Behind Lure of Organic Wines - Bloomberg.com

In Burgundy, for instance, homemade compost mixtures based on cattle dung are handed down from father to son. One recipe, according to wine consultant and historian Clive Coates, calls for droppings to be stuffed inside a cow horn, buried in the earth on a special date and dug up on another before being diluted by 10 million parts of water and applied to the soil.

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