[ghaff]

As someone who likes good French food a lot, I'd agree with the other comment that holding classic French cuisine as the ultimate dining experience feels a bit old fashioned. If someone handed me a wad of money in NYC and told me to go out and have a good meal, I might pick a more classically French restaurant but I'd probably be more likely to pick some more modern style of "farm to table" or whatever.

When I have French eating out, it's more likely to be a bistro-style restaurant. (Of course, that's partly because I rarely have really high-end meals in restaurants.

[nihonde]

My original comment wasn’t very well written but spawned a lot of responses. I meant old fashioned in the Julia Child, two-sticks-of-butter-to-taste sense of French cuisine. Of course, real French food is as varied and worthy as any other food!

[ghaff]

That's true--although I'd argue that there's still more of a set of specific rules, recipes, and techniques associated with most French cooking than with modern high-end cooking overall. In fact, I've heard it argued that one of the reasons that it's hard to replicate the best of French food outside of France is that such a specific supply chain exists for that particular cuisine.

We're probably splitting hairs at this point though. Once you go beyond classic French and bistro food (which do tend to have a fairly specific repertoire), the lines between where French ends and modern European or American begins gets pretty blurry.