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FOOD&DRINK

Can the French embrace cuisine sans booze?

It remains an uncomfortably foreign idea for some, but even the wine-loving French are experimenting with non-alcoholic drinks these days.

Can the French embrace cuisine sans booze?
Bottles containing a champagne-like and alcohol free drink are displayed in France. (Photo by Miguel MEDINA / AFP)

Being pregnant or the designated-driver in France — or attempting a “Dry January” after a booze-soaked festive season — has tended to leave few exciting drinks options when dining out.

“When I was pregnant, it was annoying to go to a restaurant and be stuck with water for the whole night,” said Argentinian sommelier Paz Levinson.

She works with Anne-Sophie Pic, the chef with the most Michelin stars in the world, and they have pioneered new approaches to drinks-pairing, such as a Brazilian coffee infusion served with the venison at their triple-starred Valence restaurant.

“It’s starting to catch on,” said Pic. “Everyone is trying it.”

Paris-based mixologist Yann Daniel admits he was “fairly dubious” about the idea at first, but quickly realised how many people were thirsty for low- and non-alcoholic concoctions.

“It’s a trend that is growing in France, following the Anglo-Saxons who are always a bit ahead of us in these things,” he told AFP.

He was commissioned to put together a menu of light cocktails based around spices, herbs, roots and teas for a hotel chain this autumn, while his colleague Matthias Giroud published a book of cocktail recipes called “No Low” (no alcohol and low alcohol).

Not everyone is convinced.

Guy Savoy, the best chef in the world according to The List, says the trend is better reserved for countries without a world-beating wine industry.

“In the number one country for great wine — I’m not judging, but it doesn’t fit,” he told AFP. 

But the data seems clear: French alcohol consumption has fallen steeply, with the average intake per adult down from 17.7 litres a year in 1960 to 9.2 litres in 2014, according to Our World in Data.

And many restaurateurs are also excited about the opportunities for new inventions.

At his eponymous restaurant near the Eiffel Tower, two-Michelin-star chef David Toutain pairs his lobster with an infusion of fir tree buds, the eel with an apple juice mixed with fennel vinegar and the pigeon with a beet-carrot nectar.

These options now sit alongside wine selections on the menu.

“It’s taken me years to put all this in place,” Toutain told AFP.

He prefers it to pairing with wines, which are never made specifically with the dish in mind.

“It takes you deeper into the experience,” he said.

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CULTURE

Paris museum takes visitors back 150 years to Impressionism’s birth

The Orsay Museum in Paris is marking 150 years of Impressionism from Tuesday with an unprecedented reassembling of the masterpieces that launched the movement, and a virtual reality experience that takes visitors back in time.

Paris museum takes visitors back 150 years to Impressionism's birth

Using VR technology, visitors to “Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism” can take a plunge into the streets, salons and beauty spots that marked a revolution in art.

Through VR helmets, they can walk alongside the likes of Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Paul Cezanne on April 15, 1874, when, tired of being rejected by the conservative gatekeepers of the official art Salon, these rebellious young painters put on their own independent show, later seen as the birth of Impressionism.

The Orsay has brought together 160 paintings from that year, including dozens of masterpieces from that show, including the blood-red sun of Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise”, credited with giving the movement its name, and his “Boulevard des Capucines” where the exhibition took place.

READ MORE: Places to visit and things to do in France in Spring 2024

In rapid, spontaneous brushstrokes, the Impressionists captured everyday scenes of modern life, from Degas’s ballet dancers to Camille Pissaro’s countryside idylls to Auguste Renoir’s riverside party in “Bal du Moulin de la Galette”.

They came to define the excitement and restlessness of a new, modern age emerging out of a devastating war with Prussia and a short-lived Parisian revolt a few years earlier.

“The Impressionists wanted to paint the world as it is, one in the midst of major change,” said Sylvie Patry, co-curator of the exhibition.

“They were interested in new subjects: railways, tourism, the world of entertainment… They wanted to put sensations, impressions, the immediate moment at the heart of their painting,” she added.

‘Nuanced’

Thanks to loans from the National Gallery in Washington and other museums, it is the first time that many of the paintings — including Renoir’s “The Parisian Girl” and “The Dancer” — have hung together in 150 years.

The exhibition also includes works from that year’s official Salon, showing how the Impressionists rejected the stiff formalism of traditionalists and their obsession with great battles and mythological tales, but also how there was some cross-over, as all sorts of painters gradually adopted new styles.

“The story of that exhibition is more nuanced than we think,” said Patry.

“The artists all knew each other and had begun painting in this different style from the 1860s.”

Impressionism did not take off immediately: only some 3,500 people came to the first show, compared with 300,000 to the Salon, and only four paintings were sold out of some 200 works.

It would take several more exhibitions in the following years for the movement to make its mark.

The Orsay exhibition runs to July 14th and moves to Washington from September.

The virtual reality experience has been extended to the end of the Paris Olympics on August 11th.

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