Delia Smith has issued her brutal assessment of French cuisine, declaring that good meals there are now ‘very difficult’ to find.
Speaking to Noble Rot magazine, the celebrity chef said that modern French dishes are “not even meant to be eaten” and are just a “beautiful spot” on a plate with “towers, foam, drizzle and dust.”
Smith, 83, blamed chef Michel Guerard’s “cuisine minceur” – a cooking style developed in the 1970s in which chefs created lighter versions of traditional French dishes – for appealing to “foodie snobs” who are “on their watch your waist’.
This, Smith said, has led some of France’s biggest chefs to ditch the three “completely essential ingredients: butter, cream and flour,” she said.
“Unfortunately, that’s all a distant memory and it’s very difficult to find that kind of food in France now,” Smith said.
Delia Smith has issued her brutal assessment of French cuisine, declaring that good meals there are now ‘very difficult’ to find
The celebrity chef said modern French cuisine was just a ‘beautiful spot’ on a plate with ‘towers, foam, drizzle and dust’
Smith also said that French cuisine lacks the “completely essential” ingredients: flour, butter and cream
It is not the first time that the former chef has spoken out against the rise of modern cuisine.
The cookbook author’s comments about the decline of French cuisine come after she recently expressed her concerns about the future of Britain’s culinary scene and the demise of the TV chef in an interview with The Sunday Times.
In 2017, when Smith was appointed Order of the Companions of Honor at Buckingham Palace, she gave a speech in which she revealed that she found modern food ‘poncey’ and ‘chefy’.
The celebrity foodie said food was now just ‘theatre on a plate’, exclaiming that she ‘didn’t like it at all’.
“If I get another plate in front of me with six dots of sauce on it, I’ll go crazy,” she declared.
Delia Smith pictured at age 32 in 1973
Delia previously had a column for the Evening Standard, pictured. In addition to cutting out modern French food, she previously refrained from vegan diets
Delia shown with a fresh cake. Smith has offered her cooking wisdom to generations since the 1970s
The no-nonsense chef has also previously given up on vegan diets, telling the Financial Times that something inside her believed it was ‘wrong’.
‘If people just want to eat vegetables – and some people do – that’s fine. But don’t say you’re helping the planet, because you’re not. Point.’
Smith has offered her cooking wisdom for generations since her first television appearance in the early 1970s.
TV chef Delia Smith’s book Complete Cookery Course has been The Times’s third best-selling book and a Sunday Times Best Seller for the past five years.
Delia Smith’s cooking course, available on iPlayer, has attracted a new generation of viewers who are intrigued by how much things have changed over the past 50 years, and who have picked up tips that have stood the test of time.