Who Has an Appetite for E 407, E 412, E 461, E 473?

Part 3: Avant-Garde Cuisine

Avant-garde Cuisine

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Some contemporary chefs have adopted the label avant-gardists for themselves.
The term avant-garde, originally from the French military, referred to a vanguard unit—those who advanced ahead of the main force to explore, claim strategic ground, or delay enemy engagement. In the arts and literature, it has since come to signify individuals or movements that pioneer bold, unconventional ideas.

The French diplomat, filmmaker, and writer Romain Gary (1914–1980) is said to have described them as “people who don't exactly know where they want to go, but are the first to get there.”

Michel Ragon, a French writer born in 1924, offered a more ideological perspective: for him, the avant-garde embodied “invention opposed to routine, youth opposed to maturity, insolence opposed to prudence, disrespect opposed to conformism. It is anti-academicism, anti-officialism, rupture with established systems, marginality, contestation.”

A provocative example is Italian artist Piero Manzoni (1933–1963), who famously sold cans labeled Merda d’artista (“Artist’s Excrement”) in 1961. Another of his creations was a balloon inflated with his own breath. Such acts exemplify the avant-garde’s spirit of shock and disruption, though not necessarily of lasting innovation.

The avant-garde ethos rests on the notion that cultural progress is driven by a visionary few, with others expected to follow. This belief often entails an implicit or explicit claim to leadership—sometimes authoritarian—in art, literature, or politics. Yet history shows that avant-garde movements rarely chart the dominant course of future development.

This is especially true in the arts: Italian Futurism, Cubism, Vorticism, Constructivism, Suprematism, Dadaism, Fluxus, twelve-tone and serial music, aleatoric composition—all broke boundaries, but each eventually faded. The nature of the avant-garde is to be transitory. Inevitably, a newer movement emerges to displace the old.

In haute cuisine, claiming the mantle of the avant-garde is often more about transgression than substance—particularly when chefs borrow from decades-old industrial food techniques and present them as revolutionary.

Chefs present themselves as avant-gardists in order to equate their work with that of artists. Yet the debate over whether cooking is art or craft is hardly new—it dates back to Plato (428–347 BC), who in his dialogue Gorgias placed cooking not among the arts but among manual activities. Gelling, coloring, and flavoring with additives—long the domain of the food industry—would hardly qualify as art by such a standard; otherwise, the laboratories of industrial food manufacturers would be filled with artists.

In short, the word avant-garde alone does not denote a cooking style. A taboo-breaking act—such as introducing industrial additives to haute cuisine—may serve as a catalyst for such labeling. But the chef becomes “avant-garde” only because the act is framed that way, either by themselves or by restaurant critics. The label, however, does not make it so.

Regional Cuisine and Laboratory Cuisine: A Historical Perspective

The Origins of European Regional Cuisines

Our ideas about culinary tradition are rooted in history. Naturally, our ancestors sustained themselves with what they could grow, gather, or hunt in their immediate surroundings. What we now consider regional cuisine in Europe took shape at least by the 16th century—a period of decisive global expansion and exchange.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, though we now acknowledge that the Viking Leif Erikson likely made landfall in North America centuries earlier. In 1502, Vasco da Gama became the first European to reach India by sea. Ferdinand Magellan discovered the strait linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, but died during his attempt to circumnavigate the globe.

These expeditions dramatically expanded the known world for Europe’s trading nations. While the Spanish sought gold and precious stones, they returned with foods of equally lasting value: potatoes, tomatoes, cocoa, and corn—now pillars of European cuisine.

Adoption was swift, at least in certain regions. By 1573, the Hospital de la Sangre in Seville had documented potato purchases. Potato recipes appeared in Lancelot de Casteau’s 1604 cookbook Ouverture de Cuisine ("Opening of the Kitchen"). Casteau served three successive Princes of Liège and offered recipes for potatoes cooked with butter, wine, and nutmeg—roasted, boiled, or sliced. His book also referenced foreign preparations: partridges “in Portuguese or Catalan style,” sturgeon polpette à l’italienne, and calf’s head “in the Irish style.”

Such titles already illustrate the early awareness of culinary regionality—dishes seen as Catalan, Portuguese, Irish, or Italian. Regional typicity was being codified.

The 16th century redefined Europe’s food landscape. Without New World imports like potatoes and tomatoes, many dishes now deemed “traditional” would not exist: no German roast pork with potatoes, no Italian tomato sauce. Meanwhile, other discoveries added to culinary diversity: German physician Leonard Rauwolf encountered coffee in Aleppo; the Dutch East India Company brought green tea to Europe by 1610.

As transportation improved, so did knowledge of local specialties. Two French cookbooks from 1739 reflect this. François Marin’s Les dons de Comus ou les délices de la table and the anonymously authored Nouveau Traité de la Cuisine (likely by Menon, a pseudonym) both promoted a nouvelle cuisine and an interest in regional specificity.

Marin gave detailed recommendations for seasonal and regional products: beef from Paris, mutton from Reims, veal from Rouen or Montargis, milk-fed veal from the Paris region. He cited poultry from Normandy, Bresse, and Anjou; pigeons from Picardy and Reims; fish like sturgeon from the Seine or Loire, and oysters from Marennes and England. Even freshwater carp was compared across rivers: the Seine, the Loire, the Rhine, the Rhône.

His knowledge reflected not only culinary appreciation, but also the possibilities of transport and trade. Similarly, La Cuisinière bourgeoise by Menon recommended mutton from the Ardennes and Pré-Salé lamb from Cabourg. Across the Channel, British botanist Richard Bradley had already catalogued England’s regional cheeses in The Country Housewife and Lady's Director (1727).

By 1767, Paris even had a delicatessen delivery service, the Bureau du comestible. It aimed to supply provincial clients with elite ingredients from the best sources. Its catalog, the Gazetin du Comestible, listed items like andouilles from six cities, live crayfish from Alsace, and trout from Lake Geneva. A 3% commission was charged, with payments due in two parts.

The venture failed, not due to demand but because merchants feared taxation if prices and inventories became too visible. Yet the existence of such a service proves that regional reputations were already well established in the 18th century, many of which, like Bresse poultry or Pré-Salé lamb, still endure today.

France is unusually well documented, but the concept applies globally. Regional cuisines in China, South America, and Pacific islands are often even older, shaped not by external imports but by long-standing local ecosystems.

In all traditional cuisines, knowledge accumulation across centuries has defined what we now consider local identity. Typical cooking methods evolved from available ingredients. Soil, climate, and biodiversity influenced taste profiles even among the same crops grown in different areas. Trade of such local specialties likely existed even in preliterate cultures.

What we now call regional cuisine is the product of centuries of adaptation, migration, and exchange. Its foundation lies not in purity or isolation, but in the intelligent use of local ingredients and knowledge passed through generations. In contrast, so-called avant-garde cuisine often relies on short-lived provocation and borrowed industrial techniques framed as innovation.

By examining both traditions—rooted, historical regionalism and performative modernism—we are reminded that culinary greatness need not be loud, disruptive, or declared. Sometimes, it simply endures.

In haute cuisine, claiming the mantle of the avant-garde is often more about provocation than genuine progress especially when chefs recycle decades-old industrial techniques and dress them up as innovation. Calling such acts revolutionary does not create a new culinary genre; it creates a spectacle. But spectacle is not substance, and disruption is not a style.

What passes for “avant-garde” today is often a calculated performance: additives become alchemy, emulsifiers masquerade as invention, and the banal is elevated by PR. Critics applaud, diners are dazzled, and a lucrative myth is born. Meanwhile, the food industry quietly smiles, its methods now glamorized by the very chefs who once claimed to liberate cuisine from conformity.

But real culinary achievement doesn’t come from copying factories. It comes from time, place, and memory; from generations of cooks shaping flavors through necessity, not marketing. Regional cuisines, grounded in soil and season, may not shout—but they endure. That is not rebellion. That is civilization.