Picture the scenario. You’ve put your best frock on and painted your toenails with a classy little red number. Your hair’s been blow-waved to within an inch of its life and, basically, you’re as ready as you’re ever going to be. Your date picks you up, and both he and his car are sparkly clean. You look at each other and smile: it’s going to be soooo good.
You arrive at the restaurant and it reeks of style. Elegant table lamps on starched white linen, cutlery winking at you, a little jazz in the background – it all points to a big bill at the end of the night. But you don’t care. You won’t be paying.
Cut to the meal, and you are starving. It’s 8:30pm and your stomach has been making embarrassing gurgly sounds for the past half hour. Ah, here comes the meal. A stylishly camp waiter is placing it in front of you with a flourish. But hang on, what’s this? Oh right, this must be a complimentary appetiser from the chef. No? Surely this can’t be the meal you ordered, in all its mouthwateringly vivid detail? It’s so…. compact. You give your date a sick little smile, stab your one piece of smoked trout and dip it in the accompanying home-made egg mayonnaise. Mmmm. Now, where’s my meal?
Yes, folks it’s true. Nouvelle cuisine is back in style. I’ll never understand how it got there in the first place, but here it is again, in all its glory, mocking us peasants. Who made it stylish? Rich eccentrics? French people? Who else in their right mind would pay $25 for a sliver of artichoke? Yes, alright, it’s on a big white plate swimming in a pool of exquisite sauce, but where’s the value for money? Where’s the food police? Where’s my MEAL? And the worst thing is, you are powerless to complain for fear of being sniffed at by the mait’re de. Yes, sir, I understand that the hens who laid the eggs for my mayo were hand-fed by fair maidens in Austria, but I’m still hungry. Just give me a dollop of Praise, OK? I want the meal that was described on the menu. No, I don’t want a complimentary macciatto. I just want a serving that is more than a mouthful. What?! Another $25?! Look, just give me everything on the dessert menu, OK? With extra cream.
What exactly does ‘nouvelle’ mean, anyway? I think it means ‘new vogue’. I looked it up in the Collins dictionary, but it didn’t rate a mention. I tried my thesauras: it had three meanings – ‘new’, ‘vulgar’ and ‘wealthy’. Hmmm. Could this possibly mean that my meal is modern and revoltingly expensive, therefore justifying its diminutive proportion? Or that it is a new trend only for the filthy rich? I don’t know, but one thing I do know is that it certainly doesn’t mean a great big roast with lashings of gravy and four different types of root vegetable.
So what to do about nouvelle? Revolt and insist that all our meals come with chips and HP? Eat pizza for the rest of our lives? Rest assured, lovers of food, things change and they will change again (thank God). In the meantime, viva the free bread roll.
