French Cuisine

French cooking is regional before it is anything else. By the sea it is mussels and shellfish; inland, beef and lamb; in the south-west, duck; in Corsica, pork and wild boar. But a handful of dishes travelled out of their regions long ago and now turn up on menus from Lille to Nice, and those are the ones to start with.

A fresh baguette, the staple of French bakeries
The baguette — crisp crust, soft crumb, and the base of the cheapest good lunch in France.

What holds it together

Every country has its combination of flavours. In France the pillars are garlic, cheese, onion and cream — the cream, incidentally, is how carbonara ended up creamy outside Italy — with tomatoes and thyme added in the south. The French cook duck and lamb better than anyone, and cheese goes into everything inland, goat cheese most of all.

The baguette deserves its reputation. Bakery sandwiches built on one — goat cheese with honey and walnuts, for instance — cost 4.5 to 7€ and are a full meal. They are also the only way to eat between 14:00 and 19:00, when restaurant kitchens are shut: lunch is served from about 12:00 to 14:00 and dinner from 19:00.

The shape of a French meal

A traditional meal runs to at least three courses. Les entrées or hors d’œuvre are soups, egg dishes, salads or charcuterie; sometimes a fish course follows. Les plats are the mains, meat (viandes) or fish (poissons), usually sauced and served with potatoes, rice or pasta and vegetables. A cheese plate of local cheeses comes before dessert — sorbets, fruit tarts, chocolate or cream mousses, and crème brûlée, still the most ordered of them all.

The set menu is always the cheapest way in. Expect from 14–15€ for three courses in a modest place, 30–40€ in a smarter one. The plat du jour starts around 10€, and the menu du jour pairs it with a starter or a dessert. At the other end, a Michelin-starred tasting menu of five to seven small courses runs from 150 to 400€ — Paris holds several of the most expensive restaurants in the world.

Ten dishes worth ordering

Snails baked in their shells with parsley and garlic butter
Escargots à la bourguignonne — the one dish you will not find done properly anywhere else.

1. Escargots à la bourguignonne. Snails baked in their shells under parsley and garlic butter, about 10€ as a starter. Lean meat, and the clearest possible demonstration that garlic is the king of French seasonings. Supermarkets sell them frozen and nearly ready.

2. Moules marières. Mussels cooked in dry white wine with shallots and parsley, served with chips, 10–15€ a pot. Standard everywhere, best on the coasts; in Provence they arrive in chopped tomato instead, and in the north the Belgian version with chips is the rule. See French mussels.

Potato gratin with cheese and bacon, baked until golden
Gratin, in its Alsatian form with Munster and bacon — winter food, and Christmas-market food.

3. Gratin dauphinois. Layers of sliced potato baked slowly in cream and milk — the Dauphiné original has no cheese at all. Its mountain cousin is tartiflette, from Savoy, with bacon, onion and a whole Reblochon on top; Alsace makes its own version with Munster. About 15–17€ in a restaurant, and sold at every Christmas market.

Beef stewed in red Burgundy with bacon, onions and mushrooms
Bœuf bourguignon: beef, red Burgundy, bacon, button onions, mushrooms. Nothing surprising, everything right.

4. Bœuf bourguignon. Beef braised in red Burgundy with bacon, small onions and mushrooms. See the cuisine of Burgundy.

5. Coq au vin. Cockerel flamed in brandy, then stewed in wine with mushrooms and onions — in Alsace with Riesling, elsewhere with red. See the cuisine of Alsace.

6. Oysters. Half a dozen on ice with lemon, from a market stall or a brasserie, all year round.

7. Foie gras. Cold on toast with a sweet white wine, from about 10–12€ as a starter.

8. Duck. Confit leg around 15€, magret in the better places, and duck fat on the potatoes either way.

9. Galettes and crêpes. A savoury buckwheat galette, a sweet crêpe and a bowl of cider, about 10€ for all three.

Warm goat cheese salad, a standard French starter
Salade de chèvre chaud — warm goat cheese on toast over leaves, on nearly every menu in the country.

10. Salade de chèvre chaud. Warm goat cheese on toasted bread over salad leaves, often with honey and walnuts. The reliable light lunch, and a good measure of a kitchen.

Cuisses de grenouille, frog legs fried with garlic and parsley
Frog legs: mild, tender, closer to chicken than to anything alarming.

And the one everybody asks about: frog legs, cuisses de grenouille. They are not common, and where you do find them — the Latin Quarter in Paris, mostly — they are a tourist dish. Worth ordering once; the taste is delicate rather than remarkable.

Regional cooking

Each region has its own page here:

Going deeper

By ingredient: French cheeses, French wines, truffles, soups, breakfast.

By list: traditional dishes from France, the 50 most renowned regional dishes, fish dishes, salads and regional desserts.

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