Since Adam Gopnik wrote of the “crisis” in French cuisine in 1997, there’s been an ongoing debate about the rise and fall and shifting expectations and what it all means of French food. Once upon a time, French cuisine dominated restaurant culture (why do you think we call it a restaurant). You were not a chef if you couldn’t make a mother sauce (why do you think we call them chefs). But over the past few decades, French cuisine was supplanted with chefs inspired by the cuisines of Japan, Spain, and California, among others. Yes, Balthazar and Jean-George still thrive, but French cuisine is no longer the be-all-end-all of fine dining. It isn’t even the be-some.
But look around and a certain nostalgia for the white tablecloths and frisée aux lardons of French dining is manifesting. There are steak tartares and steak frites, moules and salad nicoise. New York is riddled with oeufs mayo from Libertine, Le Crocodile, and Le French Diner, while Le Dive and Deux Chats sling escargot-stuffed mushrooms and raclette. D.W. French in Boston styles itself as a brasserie serving ratatouille and trout almondine. You can get a foie gras terrine at Bûcheron in Minneapolis, and pot-au-feu at the reopened Lord Stanley in San Francisco. Annabelle Brasserie in Houston serves moules au vadouvan, while Chicago’s Bistro Monadnock has moules marinieres. And you can get jambon baguettes at both D.C.’s La Bonne Vache and Petite Cerise. Many of these restaurants have opened in the past two or so years.
Chefs sometimes call these “modern” takes on brasseries and bistros, largely because they diverge from the traditional French definitions. “Technically speaking, a brasserie is supposed to brew their own beer and should be known for that,” says Dustin Wilson, master sommelier and co-founder of Argot in Chicago, which he describes as a brasserie with midwestern touches. “To me the word ‘brasserie’ means a nice French eatery that features many classic menu items like steak frites, steak tartare, coq au vin, and more,” and the ambiance should be refined but still casual enough to visit on a weeknight.
In fact, there’s nothing much modern about most of these restaurants. Some take a more playful approach — at D.W. French there is boeuf bourguignon turned into a sandwich, and La Bonne Vache serves a duck liver mousse sprinkled with everything bagel seasoning. But mostly they are operating firmly within the French culinary tradition, and usually with design to match. There are plenty of chalkboard menus and bistro chairs, and vaguely Parisian bric-a-brac smattered on the walls, evoking an idea of France even if guests have never been there themselves.
Chef Douglass Williams of D.W. French says his desire to create a brasserie came from growing up working in restaurants. “It just happened to be that the restaurants that were opened during that time were French, and getting trained in French was very popular,” he says. So throughout his career, he says French cooking was “always bubbling” in his head. Those traditions influenced everything else he’s cooked, but he wanted an opportunity to actually put that on the plate.
French food, by virtue of its history, is familiar. No one is disappointed seeing French onion soup on the menu, says Williams. This makes brasseries an easy sell. In a time when higher prices and stagnant wages mean diners are willing to take fewer risks on new restaurants, a new restaurant adhering to a recognizable formula takes the guesswork out, and gives a new restaurant a better chance at becoming an established one. Most Americans aren’t standing at the precipice of newness when ordering a ham and brie sandwich and a glass of wine.
The brasserie and the bistro are distinctly not fine dining. These are the French equivalent of pubs, with their steaks and roast chickens and simple salads, “more casual, approachable restaurants that let you indulge in delicious French food more regularly,” says Wilson. But also, by virtue of its history, French cuisine feels fancy. This is the sweet spot the modern brasserie operates in. “I always adored that quality and that personality about a brasserie,” says Williams. “They still have the long aprons, and they still have this sort of refinement.” These two truths combined make French bistro food an affordable luxury at a time when luxury luxuries are increasingly inaccessible for most. A burger and fries at a diner may be quotidian, but call them “frites” and serve them under an Art Nouveau absinthe poster and suddenly it feels like an occasion.
It’s always hard to open a restaurant, but it’s harder now. Specifically, it is harder to run the kind of neighborhood spot everyone, both chefs and diners, seem to want. “The middle class here is going to get hammered,” chef Eric Huang recently told the New York Times. “Because your average, middle-of-the-road restaurant is still full service, but that price point is not quite high enough to pay for everything.” Some, like Huang, have gotten around that by adopting quick service. But others are trying to draw more customers by positioning their restaurants as ideal for every experience imaginable.
Williams lists the experiences he hopes people have at his restaurant: “You meet your girlfriend or your boyfriend here. You bring friends from out of town. You come here after a baseball game, just because it’s your watering hole as well. You come here to celebrate your engagement. You come here to celebrate your anniversary, you come here to bring your kids, you come here for brunch.” Perhaps going to the same neighborhood bistro multiple nights a week is how it works in France. But France has a lot going for it, namely universal health care and other nationalized benefits workers don’t have to pay for out of pocket, that America doesn’t, that affect both restaurateurs’ ability to open restaurants, and customers’ ability to dine out.
Still, if anyone has a shot at becoming everything to everyone, it’s a cute French brasserie. It feels like a place to get a drink after work, or a celebratory steak au poivre, or to entertain the kids with frites and oeufs mayo, which you tell them is basically egg salad. Whether diners can afford to become a regular is another question. But don’t worry, the menu isn’t changing.
