Why Escoffier? Surtout, Faites Simple

By James MacGuire

IT IS NOW 40 YEARS since the Paris critics Gault and Millau announced the arrival of a Nouvelle Cuisine — lighter, fresher, more spontaneous — to replace a style of cooking that for decades had been ostentatious, absolute, and downright stodgy. That exhausted style was indissolubly linked to Georges Auguste Escoffier, who had died in 1935. His enduring …