nouvelle cuisine

American  

[noo-vel kwee-zeen] / nu vɛl kwiˈzin /

noun

(sometimes initial capital letters)

1. a modern style of French cooking that emphasizes the use of the finest and freshest ingredients simply and imaginatively prepared, often with fresh herbs, the artful arrangement and presentation of food, and the use of reduced stocks in place of flour-thickened sauces.

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nouvelle cuisine British  

/ ˈnuːvɛl kwIˈziːn /

noun

1. a style of preparing and presenting food, often raw or only lightly cooked, with light sauces, and unusual combinations of flavours and garnishes

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Etymology

Origin of nouvelle cuisine

Literally, “new cooking”

Example Sentences

He also explores yuppies’ attraction to marathons, nouvelle cuisine and Gary Hart, who ran a pair of lawyer-driven, technocratic campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 8, 2026

It’s the moment when old-school French — think white tablecloths, heavy sauces and snooty maitre’d’s — faded into the background, allowing nouvelle cuisine and what we now call New American to take its place.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 19, 2026

But, when I interviewed him in the nineteen-eighties, he took pains to distance himself from nouvelle cuisine.

From The New Yorker • Mar. 18, 2019

An upper-middle-class background gave them the means to fly to Europe and stumble into restaurants where nouvelle cuisine was being hammered out.

From New York Times • May 30, 2018

Long after his heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, when he was the world’s most visible proselytizer for nouvelle cuisine, he continued to command respect.

From Washington Post • Jan. 20, 2018