What makes French food French?

Beurrez, graisse de viande, les sauces riches et les desserts sexy.

Oh and Jacque Pepin, and Julia Child…

The distinction is becoming more and more arbitrary. A century ago, the distinction was clear: France has a time-honored canon of regional specialties—pot au feu, coq au vin, quiche Lorraine, cassoulet, navarin d’agneau, etc.—that are considered to have been so polished by repetition as to be immutable national treasures. For a very long time, French cooks just did their best to interpret these classics to the best of their ability, like a conductor trying to do right by Beethoven.

Then came Escoffier. He was one of the first megastars of French cuisine. He essentially codified the exact way every dish—no, every element of every dish—was to be prepared. His versions were seen for most of the following century as the definitive expression of French cuisine; the unimprovable standard.

Nouvelle Cuisine, a movement originating among a handful of chefs in Lyon in the 70s, basically threw away Escofier with his rich, heavy, over-the-top preparations, and instituted a minimalist approach using light, lean, concentrated flavors. From this point on, the French-ness of French cuisine became more elusive, since every chef was given free rein to invent without being bound by precedent.

Making the most of what’s on hand. Simplicity, technique, and stock – a quality brown stock can never be underestimated.

If it’s your first try, order something simple that you’ve had similarly in the past, for example onion soup, roast chicken or pork, and a simple chocolate mousse for desert. The soup lets you sample their stock, the chicken or pork their simplicity and technique, and the chocolate their quality (at more $$$ places).

By all means feel free to go with more exciting fare – you can find some very unique cuts of beef, soups, and rillettes (if you see it on the menu try it!). But if you’re trying to judge how they perform I’ve frequently (but not always) found going through the above a good measure of their attention to detail.

I remember an anecdote from the early days of Nouvelle Cuisine, when one of the rising stars of the movement stopped using the traditional meat stocks as the base for his sauces, starting with plain water, instead. One of the more traditional chefs in the area quipped to another as they paused on a footbridge over a stream, “What a shame to see so much good sauce go to waste!”

Seriously, the food in the best French restaurants in France and the top American restaurants is largely interchangeable. They both borrow heavily from the whole repertoire of world cuisines, try to honor whatever fresh, seasonal ingredients are available, and find new and surprising juxtapositions.

Butter.