Post-Cuisine

Post-Cuisine is a creative exploration of what French cooking might become were it to be unmoored from tradition and "freed from any school of thought, codes, dogma, techniques, gestures, rhythms, and chronologies of tasting."

Guillaume Sanchez, chef of the Michelin-starred NE/SO in Paris, found his restaurant closed by Covid and began to ask himself questions. What would he do if the restaurant never re-opened? What if he simply started over in every way possible? If architecture could have a post-modern moment, could cooking have a post-cuisine?

Sanchez's expectations for what he calls his generation of mutant, imperfect cooks are not as radical as his words might imply. He's certainly no Marinetti, disregarding attention to palatability and pleasure.

Instead, Sanchez's ideals are informed by his experience of ingredients and his willingness to imagine pairings that are outside tradition but not all that far-fetched, sometimes employing very modern culinary techniques. He organizes his ideas around six approaches, which don't fit a predictable paradigm (acid, iodine, fat, texture, quick cooking, slow cooking), and pushes cooks away from the familiar while always demanding a rationale for the innovation.

Post-Cuisine will best reward those whose French is strong enough to allow them to enjoy and perhaps dispute Sanchez's point-of-view. The book is rich in essays and discourse, and instead of sumptuous photographs it offers detailed sketches as starting points for creativity.

Hardcover. Line drawings. In French.