French food and Britain have always had one of those relationships where the line between admiration and envy gets a bit blurry. We’ve mocked it, borrowed from it, renamed its dishes when convenient, and then quietly put them back on the menu when we realised they were too good to let go.
But whether we want to admit it or not, French cuisine has shaped British food culture more than any other nation. And if you’ve ever eaten at one of our Bohémien pop-ups, you’ll know we’re proudly carrying that torch.
So how did French food actually become part of Britain’s identity?
It starts with the Normans (doesn’t everything?)
In 1066 the Normans arrived & conquered England. Over the decades the Norman influence spread to the rest of Britain. With them came French court cooking — sugar, spices, slow braises, actual technique — and the idea that food could be something more than fuel for surviving winter. For the first time, Britain cooked with intention.
Words like “beef”, “pork”, “venison”, “mutton”?
Straight from the French.
The animals kept their English names – cow, pig, deer, sheep – but the meat on the table was French. That tells you exactly who was doing the eating.
Fast-forward a few hundred years & French cooks become the gold standard
By the 18th century, wealthy English households were importing French chefs like designer handbags. If you had money, you had a French cook. If you didn’t, you pretended you understood French menus anyway. This didn’t come without pushback, influential eighteenth-century cookery writer Hannah Glasse, In her book The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple (1747), proudly denounced “French trickery,” (even though she included some French recipes herself in the book)
The French refined everything: stocks, sauces, pastry, presentation. British food wasn’t bad – just very beige by comparison. French cuisine was seen, at least by the very wealthy, as the height of sophistication.
This is when the idea of haute cuisine really sunk its teeth into us.
Escoffier arrives and changes everything
If French cuisine had a celebrity chef before celebrity chefs existed, it was Auguste Escoffier. It cannot be overstated how big of an influence this man had on not only cooks but anyone who’s ever eaten food in Britain & the wider western world.
In the late 19th century he arrived in London to run the kitchens at the Savoy hotel. Here he revolutionised how the hospitality industry works, establishing such things as:
• The brigade system
• Standardised sauces
• Classical dishes
• The idea that restaurants could be temples of refinement
He didn’t just influence British cooking – he rewired it. No longer were kitchens a chaotic mess of cooks running around, unorganised without proper structure.
Every British chef trained from this moment felt Escoffier in their bones, whether they knew it or not.
The 20th century: British chefs go to France, get yelled at, come home better
Post-war Britain wasn’t exactly the culinary capital of the world. Years of rationing had certainly taken its toll. So chefs started looking outward, particularly to France.
And what did they do?
They went to Lyon, Paris, Burgundy.
They learned the classical repertoire.
They got shouted at by terrifying French chefs.
They came home changed men & women.
Then came the Roux brothers, who in 1967 set up Le Gavroche and in 1972 The Waterside Inn — schools of French excellence disguised as restaurants. The greatest British chefs of the next generation all came from that lineage.
Marco. Ramsay. Koffmann. Wareing. Terry. Williams. The list goes on. Like a huge family tree branching out into the culinary world, who then passed their knowledge down the following generations.
They didn’t learn “British food”.
They learned French technique first – everything else after.
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So where does that leave us now?
Today, British food has its own identity again. One that’s now not only linked with French cuisine but enriched with foods from across the globe and made all the better for it. But cuisine in Britain is inseparable from French roots:
• We braise, roast & poach like the French.
• We build sauces like the French.
• We love structure, seasoning, balance – French.
• Even modern British restaurants? Mostly French technique dressed in British accents.
At Bohémien, this is exactly where we try to live – in that space between traditional French foundations & the straightforward, ingredient-first approach that defies the very best of British cooking.
Just food that makes sense.
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Why does French food still matter in Britain?
Because it taught us the most important lesson:
That technique, care & flavour carry further than trends & gimmicks. Great produce, cooked properly technique & presented simply will always be great.
The beauty of French cuisine is that all those lavish dinners cooked for kings and queens, that food is mostly gone. But the food that is loved and has lasted are the peasant dishes, the food cooked only with what was available out of necessity & practicality. We have these ingredients, they are available only when they are in season. They’re cooked simply, with proper technique, to get maximum flavour without unnecessary waste.
In a world of foams and “interpretations of this” and “deconstructions of that”, French cuisine still stands there quietly reminding us:
• cook with intention
• season properly
• don’t overcomplicate
• let ingredients speak
It’s the foundation everything else rests on — including what we do at Bohémien .
While in 2025 there may be newer & more exciting cuisines being cooked across Britain, always remember that so much of the way we cook today in our homes & the way we dine out in restaurants is directly influenced by our cousins across the channel.
Vive la France
Tom
Chef & owner of Bohémien
