Antoine de Baecque
Antoine de Baecque is a professor at the École Normale Supérieure on the rue d'Ulm. He has published, in addition to La France gastronome. Comment le restaurant est entré dans notre histoire (Payot, 2019), numerous essays on history. He directed the special issue of Histoire de la cuisine française of the magazine L'Histoire, published in October 2022.
Antoine de Baecque recounts a historical moment in our culture, one in which eating well became a specific feature of French identity. French gastronomy was born in Paris at the end of the 18th century. In a few decades, it conquered the world. With the invention of the restaurant in 1769, and its expansion in the 19th century, part of the French identity is now based on food.
Everyone on the planet knows that the French love to eat, that they love to enjoy and that they love to talk about it.
| Full price | 5 € |
| Subscriber rate | Free |
All audiences
Duration: 1 hour
Reservation on site, at the Franciscan's reception, and online
In 10 fluid and lively chapters, Antoine de Baecque introduces us to Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau, the first restaurateur; La Reynière, the first great gastronomic critic; Antoine Carême, the first star chef; Brillat-Savarin, the first great intellectual of the table; and Escoffier, the first modern chef of French cuisine. He teaches us a lot of different things: about the first draught beer, about the association between Escoffier and César Ritz, which revolutionized cooking and the hotel business, about the first "gourmets", or about the "chicken sauce trial", which allowed the restaurant owners to win the war that opposed them to the caterers and the innkeepers
A meeting moderated by Philippe Normand, former cultural director of the Franciscans, followed by a signing.