Elaborate sauce-making declined under the bistronomy movement’s simpler ethos, rising health consciousness, and the New Nordic insistence on ingredient purity—ripples of influence that extended far beyond Paris and Copenhagen. But above all, it was about the cost—of time, labor, and precious ingredients.
Yet in recent years, something shifted. Classical French cuisine found a new audience across London, Paris, and New York—and once-fusty sauces were something worth naming on the menu again. Today, a new generation of chefs is returning to the craft of sauciering. From airy emulsions and shimmering sabayons to seductive béarnaise and brooding demi-glace, classic French sauces are reappearing—not just in fine dining restaurants and traditional bistros, but also in natural wine bars and small-plate restaurants.
64 Goodge Street in London is one of the city’s newer restaurants that has a menu built around the architecture of sauces. A lobster vol-au-vent might feature the coral tye-dye luxuriance of the crustacean’s tail and claw, and a quail forestière might include meat cookery that’s technically dazzling, but on eating both of these dishes, it’s the velvet restraint of an umami-sweet sauce Américane, and the corrupting depth of the foie gras-layered sauce albufera that linger on the tongue and etch into memory.
There are seven sauces like that at the restaurant, and each one takes a minimum of two days. Chicken bones go into the oven on Tuesday night, and the sauce is built up over Wednesday, Head Chef Stuart Andrew explains. The albufera, for instance, starts with wing stock enriched with drumsticks, shallots, and button mushrooms, plus two bottles of Madeira reduced to a single glass with vinegar. Finally—to achieve its sensuous lushness—caramelized foie gras is blended with cream and the chicken reduction, finished with Chardonnay vinegar, white pepper, and salt.
Some dishes don’t carry the French names of their sauces, like a dish of brill, shellfish, and Breton cider, where sauce Normande could just as easily have been mentioned. When they are named, the aim is to seduce with a touch of whimsy and decadence. “I think in some ways it’s a nod to the past, but it’s also, it sounds a little bit, for want of a better word, camp,” Andrew explains. “These grandiose sauce names are a sort of direct contrast to some of the minimalist menus from ten years ago.”
Dining and Cooking