The tortilla de patata at Restaurante Colosimo in Madrid
Addressing the complications of governing the French Republic, Charles De Gaulle asked in 1962 “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?”
From today’s point of view, you might answer “Big deal; My local Trader Joe’s has more than 500.”
And factually speaking, you would be correct.
However, what the French President was saying was less about variety in the grocery store dairy aisle than what these products represented. France is known as much for its cheese as the Eiffel Tower. And when you take cows milk (though also sometimes sheep or goats milk too), and let it mingle with rennet, some local bacteria, and a thousand years of trial and error at a time when average person traveled no more than a few miles in their entire life, and you see that what Mr. De Gualle was really talking about.
Food represents people—their history, their complexity, their know how, and their ways of making wonderful things when left to the studious combination of time, good ingredients, nature, and some human ingenuity. (Though let’s be clear—sometimes the narrative is not so pretty—and to that we will dedicate future ink, but just not today).
And just like cheese, people are complex.
But other than being a really fantastic quote, does De Gualle’s question still have any meaning today—in the age of Amazon Prime?
With social media food trends, 500 varieties of cheese at Trader Joe’s, 125 flavors of chili crunch, liquid tannins, and a version of Burnt Basque cheesecake on the menu of every fashionable restaurant in America, one might ask the following question.
Is food regionality dead, and can regional movements still happen?
In January at the gastronomical conference Madrid Fusion, Chef Nicolai Nørregaard from inventive Danish restaurant Kadeau, when asked about the latest on the New Nordic food movement, answered in a way that might lead one to believe that the movement as we knew it is really no longer a thing. “These days we might be influenced by a chef in Mexico City or Japan. The world is a smaller place,” he said to slightly paraphrase from my chicken scratch notes.
Not to get too off topic, but the New Nordic movement, which anointed Copenhagen as capital of the food world was in retrospect the most unlikely triumph of modern gastronomy. Influenced by a combination of global cooking techniques honed by a handful of chefs who had cooked at the best restaurants in the world and returned home, the Danes looked inward and expressed their unique deep story—and that changed how the world thought about food. Unfortunately, lost in the debate over how volunteer interns were compensated and whether or not fine dining is dead, the entire conversation of what Rene Redzepi and company managed to pull off has been obfuscated. It wasn’t perfect and we must learn from our mistakes and shortcomings… but it was truly some some revolutionary shit, and it’s a big reason why many of the restaurants you love exist.
New Nordic Cuisine happened only 20 years ago, but it seems like many lifetimes.
In today’s super connected world, with its short attention span, its relentless search for what is next over what is lasting, and the constant chase of social media clicks, one might ask if such regional food movement is still possible today, and if so, where such a movement might happen?
Gastronomy is a conversation between land and people—ingredients and personalities, and that conversation has gone into hyperdrive.
With regard to ingredients, climate change has made what can be grown locally a moving target, and the personal narratives surrounding food have changed the conversation even faster.
Notwithstanding, I believe are at the beginning of a pretty exciting time.
More people have more knowledge about food than at any time ever before—in human history. It wasn’t long ago that being obsessed with food was seen as some sort of hedonistic sideshow fetish, but now it’s part of mainstream culture. I will admit, I don’t always love how this manifests, but as a culture, we have more knowledge, more vocabulary and more cultural and gastronomical references than ever before at any point in history.
So while things have definitely changed since the Romans taught the Spanish how to cure ham, and at a much quicker pace since Charles DeGualle said that thing about cheese while John F. Kennedy was president, I think there is a lot to be excited about.
Perhaps the conversation is only starting.
Seems like it’s time for the US to invest in regulatory systems like the EU and create some Appellations above and beyond wine. A legal definition for a cheese or ham would create investment mechanisms for the regional economy.