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

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

In the fall of 1980, Patrick Clark, the first chef at Keith McNally’s first restaurant, the Odeon, helped introduce nouvelle cuisine to New York when it was all the rage in Europe.

From New York Times • Aug. 13, 2019

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

It referred back to nouvelle cuisine, all glossy surfaces and dotted sauces.

From The Guardian • Mar. 17, 2019

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