French cuisine is considered to be one of the world's most refined and elegant styles of cooking. The national cuisine known today has evolved from centuries of social and political change. The Middle Ages brought lavish banquets to the upper class with ornate, heavily seasoned food prepared by chefs such as Guillaume Tirel. The era of the French Revolution, however, saw a move toward fewer spices and more liberal usage of herbs and refined techniques, beginning with François Pierre La Varenne and further developing with the famous chef of Napoleon Bonaparte and other dignitaries, Marie-Antoine Carême.
French cuisine was codified in the 20th century by Georges Auguste Escoffier to become the modern version of haute cuisine. Escoffier's major work, however, left out much of the regional character to be found in the provinces of France. Gastro-tourism and the Guide Michelin helped to bring people to the countryside during the 20th century and beyond, to sample this rich bourgeois and peasant cuisine of France. Basque cuisine has also been a great influence over the cuisine in the southwest of France.
Ingredients and dishes vary by region. There are many significant regional dishes that have become both national and regional. Many dishes that were once regional, however, have proliferated in different variations across the country in the present day. Cheese and wine are also a major part of the cuisine, playing different roles both regionally and nationally with their many variations and Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) (regulated appellation) laws.

The term nouvelle cuisine has been used many times in the history of French cuisine. This description was seen in the 1740s of the cuisine from Vincent La Chapelle, François Marin and Menon and even during the 1880s and 1890s to describe Escoffier's cooking. The term came up again however during the 1960s used by two authors Henri Gault and Christian Millau to describe the cooking of Paul Bocuse, Jean and Pierre Troisgros, Michel Guérard, Roger Vergé and Raymond Oliver. These chefs were working toward rebelling from the "orthodoxy" of Escoffier's cuisine. Some of the chefs were students of Fernand Point at the Pyramide in Vienne and had left to open their own restaurants. Gault and Millau "discovered the formula" contained in ten characteristics of this new style of cooking.
The first characteristic was a rejection of excessive complication in cooking. Second, the cooking times for most fish, seafood, game birds, veal, green vegetables and pâtés was greatly reduced in an attempt to preserve the natural flavors. Steaming was an important trend from this characteristic. The third characteristic was that the cuisine was made with the freshest possible ingredients. Fourth, large menus were abandoned in favor of shorter menus. Fifth, strong marinades for meat and game ceased to be used. Sixth, they stopped using heavy sauces such as espagnole and béchamel thickened with flour based roux, in favor of seasoning their dishes with fresh herbs, quality butter, lemon juice, and vinegar. Seventh, they used regional dishes for inspiration instead of haute cuisine dishes. Eighth, new techniques were embraced and modern equipment was often used, Bocuse even used microwave ovens. Ninth, the chefs paid close attention to the dietary needs of their guests through their dishes. Tenth and finally, the chefs were extremely inventive and created new combinations and pairings.
Some have speculated that a contributor to nouvelle cuisine was World War II when animal protein was in short supply during the German occupation.
No matter what the origins were, by the mid-1980s some food writers stated that the style of cuisine had reached exhaustion and many chefs began returning to the haute cuisine style of cooking, although much of the lighter presentations and new techniques remained.

The restaurant has its origins in French culture. Prior to the late 18th century, diners who wished to "dine out" would visit their local guild member's kitchen and have their meal prepared for them. However, guild members were limited to producing whatever their guild registry delegated them to. These guild members offered food in their own homes to steady clientele that appeared day-to-day but at set times. The guest would be offered the meal table d'hôte, which is a meal offered at a set price with very little choice of dishes, sometimes none at all.
The first steps toward the modern restaurant were locations that offered restorative bouillons, or restaurants — these words being the origin of the name restaurant. This step took place during the 1760's - 1770's. These locations were open at all times of the day, featuring ornate tableware and reasonable prices. These locations were meant more as meal replacements for those who had "lost their appetites and suffered from jaded palates and weak chests."
In 1782 Antoine Beauvilliers, pastry chef to the future Louis XVIII, opened one of the most popular restaurants of the time — the Grande Taverne de Londres — in the arcades of the Palais-Royal. Other restaurants were opened by chefs of the time who were leaving the failing monarchy of France, in the period leading up to the French Revolution. It was these restaurants that expanded upon the limited menus of decades prior, and led to the full restaurants that were completely legalized with the advent of the French Revolution and abolition of the guilds. This and the substantial discretionary income of the French Directory's nouveau riche helped keep these new restaurants in business.

The ever popular Dining-OUT/Good Hope FM radio reviews are drawing listeners in their thousands on Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons. Dining-OUT with Natalie Becker and Lifestyling with Priya Reddy air on Thursdays at 6:40pm and Saturdays at 4:10pm. Reviews cover location, ambiance, quality of service, food and value for money. Listen in this week and hear reviews of Cape Towns best restaurants by these popular celebrities.

Meanwhile, Durban’s popular “Lunch with Varshan” has now moved to Gauteng and can be heard on Friday lunch times at 12:00 on Lotus FM. These reviews are live and during Varshan’s lunchtime show he crosses to that week’s restaurant to get live feedback by cell phone from the review team.

July saw Dining-OUT breaking all records with 191,000 visitors looking at 671,000 pages and clocking up almost 4 million hits. This is more than double the number of visitors from a year ago and shows the incredible growth in popularity that the website continues to command even in its 7th year of operation. During last month the website received over 5000 visitors a day making it by far the most popular online restaurant guide in South Africa.

Weekend visits still amount to half of weekday visits (per day average) showing that even those without PCs at home are managing to find restaurants online at work. The bulk of visitors logged on during the middle part of the day, with the first few logging on from as early as 5:00am each day.

“Sushi” was the month’s most popular search word in July, “Google” was the most popular referrer and 52% of visitors came from South Africa with the USA, Great Britain and (surprisingly) Norway, next. Restaurant telephone bookings are measured by diners clicking the telephone bookings button and on average Dining-OUT provided restaurant owners with an average of 24.5 table bookings per restaurant for the month.

With the long wet winter drawing to a close, people are already looking towards December and starting to plan Christmas lunches, New Year parties and other end of year functions. In order to avoid disappointment you should be making those bookings now.

Using Dining-OUT’s email function you can note down your requirements including number of people, date and time, smoking or non-smoking, inside or out and also request details of any special function menus. Copy and paste this into the text portion of the email forms of the restaurants you are interested in and send them off.

Anyone looking for Christmas or New Year accommodation should log onto www.sleeping-out.co.za and make their bookings urgently. Accommodation is booked up even quicker than restaurants so it is good to get in early.

There are few people with access to the internet who haven’t yet zoomed down onto their home or workplace using Google’s incredible Google Earth application. People have a fascination for seeing their home from the sky and even hovering just a few metres above their roof. Some also visit the world’s hotspots such as Baghdad or Beirut from the comparative safety of their homes and offices or take a trip to Disneyworld to see the rides. Many cities in the USA now also have 3D buildings enabling you to swing down the horizon and see the skyscrapers towering above.

However, the Google Earth application has many other more useful applications. Dining-OUT has developed a Google Earth overlay that enables establishments to be highlighted on the satellite images allowing customers to look at an area and see all the restaurants listed with Dining-OUT as well as accommodation listed with its sister website, Sleeping-OUT, all on the same map.

This new facility will be live on Dining-OUT within a few weeks and is already live on Sleeping-OUT. Link here to see the Sleeping-OUT Google Earth image for your location and click the checkbox to enable the display of restaurants on the same map. This new feature will be especially useful for accommodation guests looking for restaurants in their vicinity. Restaurants are shown in blue and accommodation in green.

One of the most powerful features of this implementation of Google Earth is the ability to search using the search filters or category check boxes for which Dining-OUT and Sleeping-OUT are famous and in this way show only those establishments on the map that meet your specific search criteria. If you check the box that says “smoking” for example, only those establishments that allow smoking will be left on the map.

Keep an eye out for the Google map search on Dining-OUT and check it out on Sleeping-OUT in the meantime. Restaurants and accommodation listed on Dining-OUT and Sleeping-OUT will also be located on hand held and vehicle satellite navigation systems later this year complete with route mapping to your nearest establishment. Look for further updates on this.

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