The Road to Freedom Leads Through the Stomach

The three most important gastronomic films of recent years—"Burnt," "Boiling Point," and "The Bear"—are culinary tales for and about the middle class, where all the chefs have Michelin stars and appropriately large amounts of money.

The Swedish series "Restaurant" and the French film "Delicious" tell the story of the working class's emancipation and two paths to socialism: revolutionary and reformist.

The story is somewhat typical and straightforward. A brilliant chef loses his job to a foolish prince who doesn’t appreciate the chef’s artistic heights. The chef returns to his family village, where he opens an inn for stagecoaches by the roadside. Thanks to his excellent cooking, all the stagecoaches stop there, leading to the establishment of the first restaurant for everyone in history.

"Freiheit geht durch den Magen!"—"The Road to Freedom Leads Through the Stomach"—is perhaps the most beautiful and concise way to tell the fictional story of Piotr Manceron. It is also a much better title than "Delicious."

The fictional tale of the first restaurant in France, just before the French Revolution, is also a story about how one is never "just a cook." The hero here doesn’t scream like Hendrik Höfgen at the end of "Mephisto." Instead, he is proud to be a chef.

This is a story of emancipation through the equality of all at the table. As one character says, "We treat every guest like a prince." This is, incidentally, one of the most beautiful expressions of what hospitality truly is.

It's also about emancipation through work. Manceron frees himself through his work, and kitchen work in the 18th century was even harder than it is today. Work is what makes us human, aside from cooking.

The film has many historical anachronisms, starting with the fundamental question: When did restaurants start to exist? What is a restaurant, and how does it differ from other eateries?

The first eateries operated in ancient Rome. The first establishment recognized as fulfilling the basic principles of modern gastronomy, like a menu with dish choices, indeed originated in France in the mid-18th century. Specifically, in 1765, chef A. Boulanger, specializing in soups, opened the first restaurant in Paris near the Louvre, not in the countryside along a stagecoach route—a more prestigious location that attracted a wealthier clientele.

The appearance of fries in one scene is also intriguing. The earliest fries likely originated in Belgium between the 16th and 17th centuries, where they were a winter staple for poor peasants. However, their classic form, fried sticks, is named "Pont Neuf" after the bridge where the first fries were probably sold in Paris during the French Revolution. It's possible that fries were consumed while watching the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette—or perhaps later, those of Danton and Robespierre.

There is much more culinary symbolism in the film. The delicacy of truffles with potatoes, underrated by the clueless aristocrats, reappears in a scene where all classes sit together at the table. This combination was shocking at the time because it broke cultural and class taboos. The aristocratic truffle was not meant to be paired with the lowly potato, fit only for pigs and the poor—a dish with a "Phrygian cap."

"Delicious" is certainly a tale that fits the saying, "Even if it’s not true, it’s well-conceived." It's a story about the birth of modern gastronomy, albeit one with anachronisms, as it reflects an era closer to Escoffier, a century later. French cuisine dominated European tables for centuries, beginning at least in the 17th century when French haute cuisine replaced the previously dominant Italian cuisine at aristocratic tables.

In a class-based society, everything has a class character—even food. Viewing what we eat, how we eat, and how we cook from the perspective of class relations makes sense.

"The Road to Freedom Leads Through the Stomach" (the German title is the best) offers such a class-conscious, Marxist view of the development of gastronomy in the second half of the 18th century. The history of gastronomy, the history of food, is inseparable from social history. In France, the restaurant boom occurred after the French Revolution (following the events depicted in the film) when many prominent chefs, like the film’s protagonist, lost their jobs with the aristocracy due to the Revolution.

This growth in gastronomy was part of the broader development of productive forces and the transition from a feudal to a capitalist economy, eventually leading to the emergence of a class later known as the "aristocracy of labor"—specialists who were, in part, the successors of medieval artisans.

The Swedish series "Restaurant," mentioned at the outset, is another tale of this type, brought into modern times with a strong focus on trade unions and misalliance.

Did you like this text? Do you want more similar ones? Support my blog