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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Annelie Geissler

THE SECRET HISTORY OF FRENCH COOKING

Luke Barr

The Outlaw Chefs Who Made Food Modern

From the New York Times bestselling author of Provence, 1970, a lively and riveting account of the revolutionary development of French "nouvelle cuisine", spurred by renegade chefs of the 1960s and 1970s.
In THE SECRET HISTORY OF FRENCH COOKING, Barr takes us through the tumultuous birth of nouvelle cuisine, illustrating the triumphs and controversies within this culinary counterculture revolution with intimate looks at some of the most famous chefs of the era, names like Paul Bocuse and Michael Guerard, but also the lesser-known female chefs who fought against sexist exclusion from training and jobs while challenging chauvinistic beliefs.

Post-1960s France was full of possibility, conflict and controversy. It bred forms of counterculture rebellion that redefined taste, and, at the forefront of the rebellion, was the "Bande à Bocuse," a gang of rebels, rivals, and old friends who transformed cooking and dining across the world and who, in the space of a few short years, upended the staid world of French cooking and redefined the role and cultural importance of chefs and restaurants.

The story of nouvelle cuisine, with its drama, celebrity, money, and politics, its spectacular success and the inevitable, ferocious backlash, is very much the story of the birth of modern food and restaurant culture, the way we eat today, and it's a story told in vivid, intimate detail in THE SECRET HISTORY OF FRENCH COOKING.

LUKE BARR is the grandnephew of M.F.K. Fisher and an editor and news director at Travel + Leisure magazine, where he has been on staff since 2003. He had been executive editor of Gear and senior editor at Brill's Content/Inside.com. Raised in the Bay Area, he went to school in Switzerland and graduated from Harvard. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, architect Yumi Moriwaki, and their two daughters.
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Published 2026-03-17 by Dutton

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Luke Barr writes the jaw-dropping tale of the moment food became pop culture. He turns the rise of nouvelle cuisine into a richly woven story about art, ego, critics, and power, moving from smoky Paris kitchens to the grand stage at Disney World. I devoured it. The Secret History of French Cooking is a rich, absorbing, and deeply revealing account of how French cuisine remade itself, and what that reinvention cost.

The Secret History of French Cooking brings to life the quiet revolutions, humble origins, and enduring wisdom at the heart of French cuisine. Luke Barr's writing serves to remind us that the most meaningful food traditions are those that hold a reverence for seasonality, resourcefulness, and deep cultural memory. This kind of storytelling celebrates the very values I hold most dear: integrity in the kitchen, respect for the land, and the transformative power of gathering around a meal.

Until the seventies everyone knew what a French restaurant was supposed to be. Then nouvelle cuisine came along and changed everything. Luke Barr takes us behind the scenes to meet the bad boys of the kitchen, the forgotten women - and the people who propelled them to fame. These chefs were creating the playbook for the future, and it's all here - the good, the bad and the extremely ugly. I couldn't put the book down.

Luke Barr brings to life a pivotal moment in gastronomy with precision, curiosity, and deep respect. In this book, we see the icons of French cuisine - brilliant, imperfect, and revolutionary - reshape how the world cooks and eats. A compelling and essential story for anyone who cares about food.