France saw its first Michelin-starred vegan restaurant this year, with only vegetarian dishes on the menu. At present, more star chefs have joined the vegetable revolution of cooking, and launched training courses on different cooking vegetables, indicating that vegetables have gradually become the staple food trend from the side dishes of traditional French dishes, starting to replace the meat and fish based French cuisine

  When it comes to traditional French dishes, the first thing that comes to mind is meat dishes such as foie gras, sausage and veal, and vegetable dishes are just side dishes. But in recent years, the French have increased interest in eating vegetarian food, and top French Michelin vegan menu also more and more, according to French cuisine the shift towards a more sustainable development, especially in the last two years, during the outbreak of a lot of French people began to increase the number of edible vegetables, and chefs to respond to guest needs, cooking vegetables. Some restaurants are switching to vegetable-based vegetarian cooking.

Most notably, the chef Claire Vallee won a Michelin green star in January 2021 for ONA, a restaurant in The Acachon Bay region of Ares, near the Atlantic Coast, ONA is French without animal raw materials (Origine non animale) abbreviation, Vali chef cooking without meat and fish also do not use eggs, milk, honey and other ingredients, is not the use of any derivatives related to animals, restaurant tables and chairs do not have any leather or even wool products.

Nantes born chef Claire Vallee, who taught herself to cook, was drawn to vegetables on a trip to Asia and now has more than 140 spices from around the world in her Kitchen in France, using spices such as curry, lemon, chilli and coriander.

Star chef Vali believes that vegetables have different tastes, and that many chefs in the US, India and Asia are cooking vegetarian cuisine, which is just starting to take off in France. Chef Vali says most French chefs are steeped in the tradition of eating meat and dairy and have not yet started cooking vegetables.

Although chef Roger Verge became famous in 1970 in Provence in southern France for his Emphasis on the Mediterranean diet featuring eggplant, green peppers and zucchini, and famous French chef Jacques Ducasse introduced the all-vegetable cuisine in 1980, it did not strike a chord with more French people at that time.

Three-star chef Jean Andre Charial said his vegetable-based dishes were popular with women in 1987, while male customers complained of hunger, but he kept the vegetarian menu and now more and more customers are coming. The chef focuses on root vegetables such as turnips, flavoured with lemon and fennel, and cooks tangy peas freshly picked from his one-hectare garden.

French cuisine

French cuisine attaches great importance to the use of "food materials", inferior materials, do not make good food is the creed of French chefs. French cuisine has the characteristics of local materials, so that the taste of the north and south is different, so "where to eat what food, what food in the season" is very important!

French chef Jacques Ducasse, who raised eyebrows in 2001 when he converted his thriving RESTAURANT L 'Arpege to a predominantly vegetarian cuisine, said the most important thing was to eat in season, with leafy vegetables in spring and summer and mushrooms and pumpkins in autumn.

The school of chefs began to focus on cooking vegetables

The vegetable revolution in French cuisine, supported by French schools that train chefs like Cordon Bleu, is slowly transforming into a four-day course devoted to vegetables, in response to public demands to be more health-conscious and environmentally friendly. Eric Briffard, the head of the school, said the lack of exercise and sedentary lifestyles had led to a decline in demand for high-calorie French snails and grilled meats. He says global population growth and the quest for sustainable development require finding alternatives to a diet that is mainly meat.

Celebrity chefs in France are already gearing up for a shift, not necessarily entirely vegetarian, but by adding more vegetables, such as sauteed mushrooms, to burgers.

While pastry chefs want to continue to satisfy the French sweet tooth, Guy Krenzer of Lenotre created animal-free dark chocolate trees with baked almonds.