Pour Une Révolution Délicieuse

This manifesto from a major French chef asserts that industrial food production has corrupted the culinary world in many ways, affecting not only the quality of what people eat, but the very range of foods available.

Olivier Roellinger was a celebrated youngster who earned his first Michelin star at 29 for a restaurant on the coast of Brittany. Eventually he would earn his third star, but in 2008 he closed that restaurant, feeling that the demands of the Michelin system made it impossible to sustain. Since then he has run, with his son Hugo, a more casual restaurant emphasizing local foods (and Michelin has given them 2 stars for it anyway).

In this small book of barely 200 pages, Olivier Roellinger passionately argues that what he calls the "privatization of living things," prevents cooks and eaters from making the best choices when it comes to what they will eat.  Their choices are restricted by an emphasis on price and convenience, so that even those who are willing to step outside the system are prevented from doing so.

Longer, perhaps, on passion than on solutions, Roellinger's book seems to be raising a flag to which he hopes others will rally, trusting that with more attention to the problems, paths forward may be found.

Paperback. In French.