History Main / FrenchCuisineIsHaughty

* In ''Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob,'' Generictown has a French restaurant, Chez Elmo's ("Frogs and Snails! We deliver!). Monsieur Elmo (and his brother, who works at a restaurant in Paris) both seem more weary and beleaguered than snooty, though, from constantly dealing with obnoxious customers.

* Series/{{Frasier}} and Niles Crane often dine at high-end, exclusive French restaurants in Seattle. They're regular diners at Chez Henri, [[BilingualBonus Le Cigare Volant, Le Petit Bistro and Quelquechose]] while looking down at other cuisines. Shortly after Niles and Daphne get together she lampshades their snobby preferences when Niles admits he doesn't like her cooking.

* ''WebVideo/BingingWithBabish'' has an episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TvBiF9S89Q dedicated to the hors d'oeuvres from]] the "Be Our Guest" number from ''WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast''. (Incidentally, he concludes that "the gray stuff" is chicken liver mousse, which is, in fact, delicious.) (For copyright/YouTube reasons, the sound has a weird, under-watery character that makes zero sense on basically every level--including legal/copyright ones.)

* For most of American history, the "official cuisine" for presidential functions at the White House in Washington DC was French. This was because of UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson, who believed that French Cuisine was the ''only'' real cuisine, and that certainly his countrymen had no grand culinary tradition to fall back on (it had only relatively recently begun to develop the economic wherewithal to support any kind of high-class dining; the early years had been devoted to hacking out a society in the wilderness). In 1921 UsefulNotes/WarrenHarding decreed that from now the White House would serve American cuisine at official functions. Though some presidents since then (UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy being the best-known example) would switch it back to French, the official cuisine of the White House has stayed American since then. Mind you, like most "high-class" cuisines in the West, this "American" cuisine has some very heavy French influences.

* Played with in regards to the Americanized offshoots of French cuisine: Cajun and Creole. New Orleans is famous for an abundance of 4-star restaurants that specialize in local fare that is comparatively unpretentious while still being quite fancy and sumptuous, but its most famous dishes owe as much to French culture as they do to Spanish, Italian, and African contribution. Cajun food, meanwhile, is more directly borrowed from French, but is primarily derived from the traditional recipes of France's peasantry and is rather removed from what's usually considered ''haute cuisine'', with its own spin on Creole mainstays like jambalaya and gumbo (a lack of tomato is the easiest way to tell it apart from Creole style).

'''Daphne:'' You'd eat a worm if I gave it a French name!

* France from ''Webcomic/AxisPowersHetalia'' says his cooking is absolutely divine. He's right.

* In ''Literature/GoodOmens'' Famine's attempt to bring his restaurant franchise (which serves something that tastes exactly like normal fast food but has no nutritional benefit whatsoever - it's a "diet" "food" that makes you obese a you starve to death) to France is foiled because his pathfinder salesmen are [[DisproportionateRetribution shot dead]] 30 minutes after arriving. (He had, however, had a previous success in France with the invention of ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_cuisine nouvelle cuisine]]''.)

* This trope was averted by UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte. Although he was the Emperor of France, he, being Corsican (the cuisine of Corsica is much more Italian than French -- not surprising when you remember that Corsica had been French territory barely a year when Napoleon was born there; he grew up speaking Italian and spoke French with a noticeable accent his entire life), hired an ''Italian'' personal chef. He also ate very quickly, taking almost no time to taste the food, contrary to what is customary in French cuisine (a French family lunch might take up to two hours). During his tenure as First Consul, he himself tended to joke "If you want to eat well, go to the Third Consul, if you want to be entertained well while eating, go to the Second Consul, if you want to eat quickly, come to me." Napoleon also preferred to have his food served ''à l'ambigu'' (also known as ''Service à la française''), i. e. all courses put on the table at once.

* French chef [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Escoffier Auguste Escoffier]] is the TropeMaker for this trope. Before his coming, French cuisine wasn't particularly esteemed and being a cook was seen as a menial work because of the gruelling work conditions (they had to work all day in dark kitchens without being able to open the windows while using coal to make fire). Escoffier is largely credited for making the profession a respectable one by imposing a stricter code of conduct (forbidding the consumption of alcohol and encouraging quietness in the kitchen) while making himself not only respected but also celebrated through his sheer talent at cooking but also marketing acumen by associating himself with the contemporary elite. Escoffier approached cookery as an art form, was among the first chefs to show himself to his clients and describe the dishes, dedicated recipes to celebrities and made it a point to promote French cuisine and French products, popularizing French cuisine among nobles and rich businessmen from all the world. As such, he earned the title of "king of chefs and chef of kings".

* The cook at the Lodge house in ''Franchise/ArchieComics'' is Gaston, a very temperamental French chef.

* In ''Literature/GoodOmens'' Famine's attempt to bring his restaurant franchise (which serves something that tastes exactly like normal fast food but has no nutritional benefit whatsoever - it's a "diet" "food") to France is foiled because his pathfinder salesmen are [[DisproportionateRetribution shot dead]] 30 minutes after arriving. (He had, however, had a previous success in France with the invention of ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_cuisine nouvelle cusine]]''.)

* ''Series/{{Succession}}'': When Tom forces Greg to accompany him on an outing to show him "how to be rich," he takes Greg to a fancy French restaurant and orders them both ortolan bunting, a whole cooked bird eaten in one bite while you put a napkin over your head to hide your decadence from God's judgment. Greg finds the dish "gamy" and the whole experience unpleasant.

* In a very famous example, ''Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff'' features a scene where Ferris and his friends attempt to dine at an upscale French restaurant but the stuck-up maître d’ tries to turn them away. When Farris successfully convinces the maître d' that he's a very wealthy and powerful customer, the embarrassed maître d’ quickly shows them to a table.
* ''Film/LAStory'' has a very snooty French restaurant called l'Idiot, where the lead has to show his bank balance and several other references even to get a reservation. Snooty character played to LargeHam perfection by Creator/PatrickStewart.

* Creator/PGWodehouse, in his ''Literature/JeevesAndWooster'' stories, has Anatole, a French chef of renown that is on the private staff of an upperclass British family. He tends to be very temperamental and prone to threatening to quit whenever he feels like his work is not being appreciated. Attempts by would-be employers to lure or trade for Anatole make the plots of several stories.

** Parodied in ''Discworld/{{Hogfather}}'', where a [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Quirmian restaurant]], to the head waiter's horror, is forced to sell old boots and mud under fake Quirmian names. The manager explains the situation to him:

** In ''Discworld/UnseenAcademicals'', Glenda (a SupremeChef in her own right, though very much in the traditional British mode) sees the banquet menu as snooty and therefore [[SnobsVsSlobs unpalatable to the footballers]]. Her way of putting this is asking "You're giving them Avec?"
** This attitude is subsequently moderated in ''Discworld/{{Snuff}}'', in which Quirmian food (the Discworld counterpart of French) is acknowledged to be "pretty damn good, even if they did use a shade too much avec".

* ''Disney/TheAristocats'' featured a dish called Prime Country Goose à la Provençale, which is apparently "stuffed with chestnuts" and "basted in white wine".

* [[TeamChef Sanji]] from ''Manga/OnePiece'' uses GratuitousFrench to name his techniques in the original Japanese.