History Main / HauteCuisineIsWeird

* On ''Radio/TheRickyGervaisShow'', [[Creator/RickyGervais Ricky]] once told a story about how he took [[Creator/KarlPilkington Karl]] to The Ivy, a fancy restaurant in London. Karl ate a blob of wasabi, apparently thinking that it was haute cuisine and that the wasabi was just one mushy pea being served in a tiny portion.

* An ad for Harvey's has a man take one look at a Nouvelle Cuisine dish, and walk right out of the restaurant, loudly singing a parody of ''I Am Woman Hear Me Roar'' and attracting a huge amount of fellow blue-collar men who proceed to storm the local Harvey's.

#The proportions will be very small, unable to satisfy anyone, thus leaving the guests hungry even after consuming an entire "meal".

Compare to WineIsClassy, HollywoodCuisine, and FrenchCuisineIsHaughty, food stereotypes which might appear alongside this trope. See also ForeignQueasine, where unappealing dishes come from a strange place of origin; SnootyHauteCuisine, where the focus is on the wealth and high standards of those who can afford it; and ExoticEntree, where the food is a sign of evil rather than wealth and taste.

Haute cuisine or grande cuisine; the food of the wealthy people, the cuisine of "high-level" establishments, gourmet restaurants and luxury hotels. Haute cuisine is characterized by the meticulous preparation and careful presentation of food at a high price.

#The food is, at best, bland, or at worst highly unusual. If the food is weird looking instead of gross, the excuse will be that [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible the chef is striving for artistic value]]. See HighClassCannibal for a particularly unpleasant option.

* An ad for Frank's Red-Hot Sauce has a man look at his fancypants hifalutin' restaurant meal and FreakOut, screaming, grabbing a fire axe, and smashing open an emergency window where a bottle of the condiment is kept.

* Being a manga about how any cooking style can make tasty food, ''Manga/FoodWars'' manages to zig-zag this with Alice Nakiri's focus on molecular gastronomy. While her meals taste good to the judges and she's not seen as any lower for focusing on the science side of food, she's often on the losing side because [[TechnicianVersusPerformer she doesn't take the customers' experience with the food into consideration]]. Once she's able to prepare a dish which uses her tech to add flair rather than be a close approximation, she starts to improve on her way of cooking.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}} [[Recap/AsterixTheGladiator the Gladiator]]'', Asterix and Obelix are invited for a quick lunch by a wealthy Roman. Obelix is particularly disappointed to discover it consists of very small toasts of pâtés made with nightingale tongues, roach gums, or sturgeon eggs (aka caviar). Later on he asks for some real food instead, like wild boars.
* ''ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse'': In one comic published in the Dutch ''Donald Duck'' magazine, WesternAnimation/{{Goofy}}, while teaching the reader about the history of cuisine, tries to open his own fancy restaurant, but the inspection committee keeps turning him down because the plates are too full, until Goofy has reduced the portions to ridiculously tiny amounts.

* ''Film/BackToSchool:'' Low-brow connoisseur Thorton Melon decides his shrewish wife's hors d'ouerves are not enough for his appetite, and decides to turn them into a large hoagie. The guests are amused; his wife isn't.
* ''Film/DemolitionMan'': Taco Bell, the last surviving restaurant in the future, is treated as an incredibly high class establishment. The food served appears to be condiments separated onto individual chips or miniature tortillas with a decorative drizzle of sauce.

* ''Film/MyDinnerWithAndre'': Wally remarks he didn't expect his quail dish to be so small, while eating as ''Cafe Des Artistes''.

* ''Film/TheNuttyProfessor1996'': Sherman's parents attend a high class soiree thrown by the college. While his mother is charmed by the elegant servings, his father is annoyed, saying he can't be filled up on tiny food and asking where the ''real'' food is.

** In ''Nanny Ogg's Cookbook'', Nanny suggests that dishes which fetch a high price in Ankh-Morpork for being "exotic" were invented by desperate people who didn't have access to conventional foods. "Nobody is going to invent shark-fin soup because they ''want'' to."

* ''Series/HellsKitchen'': Season 4 saw Matt, whose Signature Dish was "Exotic Tartare", an food version of Frankenstein's Monster made of raw venison, raw quail egg, lime zest, olive oil, diver scallops, caviar, capers, and grated white chocolate. Essentially, Matt thought throwing various highbrow ingredients together made something even more highbrow. It was the first Signature Dish Gordon Ramsay puked out instead of spitting out.

'''Raz:''' Isn't that just straight up dirt?\\

* ''Webcomic/AngelMoxie'': The main character decides to try some fancy food after getting a lot of money, and [[http://www.venisproductions.com/angelmoxie/archives/4/8/488.html decides]] to go to a fancy restaurant. She says that she doesn't understand what the big deal, although she admits the appetizer is tasty, only for her date to clarify that is actually the main course.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'': When the gang goes undercover at a Hollywood gala, Ray, Pam and Cyril are forced to act as servers, and the food they're serving is things like kobe beef tartare sliders and mini quiches made from endangered eggs. Archer stacks them all together to make a tiny sandwich.
* ''WesternAnimation/FunkyCops'': In "A Fool's Errand", the duo stay in a fancy hotel as part of their assignment in protecting a VIP, and see pizzas on the menu, including a small preview picture of them. They soon find out that said preview picture was the actual size of the pizzas themselves.
* On the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "Three Hundred Big Boys", Zoidberg spends his $300 refund on foie gras and caviar, but is disappointed to find out that it's just goose liver and fish eggs.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Creme Fraiche", Randy has taken to obsessively watching FoodPorn shows on the Food Network and recreating their complex recipes, even taking the job as the chef of South Park Elementary. The kids, however, just want simple foods like Pop Tarts and chicken nuggets.

* Behold, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnLZFfgNEX8 char fish cooked in melted beeswax]], which is a served with other small components that sound extremely fancy and high-class all for a tiny dish. As one [=YouTube=] commenter pointed out, the artisan breads look more filling.

Compare to WineIsClassy, HollywoodCuisine, and FrenchCuisineIsHaughty, food stereotypes which might appear alongside this trope. See also ForeignQueasine, where unappealing dishes come from a strange place of origin; SnootyHauteCuisine, where the focus is on the wealth and high standards of those who can afford it; and ExoticEntree, where they're a sign of evil rather than wealth and taste.

* ''Literature/TheBoneMaker'': Kreya and Jentt's meal at a friend's fabulously opulent estate begins with an artfully plated ''something'' that looks like a squishy white square and tastes of herbal soap. They spit it out in unison but, fortunately, find the other courses much more palatable.

* ''Series/GoodOmens2019'': Like his counterpart in the [[Literature/GoodOmens novel]], [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse Famine]] is responsible for high-end cuisine's small portions as a way of starving people. His introductory scene sees him dining with an assosciate at a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_gastronomy molecular gastronomy]] restaurant. The "first course" is a balloon full of lavender-scented air that the waiter sprays in their faces.

* ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'': {{Exaggerated|Trope}} with the Knights of the Knowledge of the Tongue, an [[PrestigeClass Entitlement]] for whom perfect food is ''[[MundaneMadeAwesome everything]]''. For this, they'll plumb the depths of the LandOfFaerie for the most exotic FantasticFruitsAndVegetables (and meats, sometimes [[ExoticEntree sapient]]) to produce dishes that might [[TastesLikePurple Taste Like Purple]] and induce literal [[OrgasmicallyDelicious Foodgasms]], at minimum.

* [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0744.html Tarquin's dinner]] in ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'' has courses such as phoenix pate[[note]]It's pricey because phoenixes explode when they die, so the liver has to be cut out while they are still alive.[[/note]] and pegasus flank. Elan decides not to eat any of them.

* ''[[Literature/Babel2022 Babel]]'' by Creator/RebeccaFKuang: The main characters get a taste of British high society at the Oxford [[DancesAndBalls commemoration ball]]. It's a mixed experience for many reasons, but they're equal parts confused and disgusted by some of the fancy desserts:

[[caption-width-right:350:The main course, and some glasses to actually see it]]

Compare to WineIsClassy, HollywoodCuisine, and FrenchCuisineIsHaughty, food stereotypes which might appear alongside this trope. See also AlienLunch and ForeignQueasine, where unappealing dishes come from a strange place of origin; SnootyHauteCuisine, where the focus is on the wealth and high standards of those who can afford it; and ExoticEntree, where they're a sign of evil rather than wealth and taste.

** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS1E23TheCutieMarkChronicles The Cutie Mark Chronicles]]" does the "ludicrously tiny portions" variation when young Applejack attends dinner with her Manehattan relatives.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': In "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS6E13SpiceUpYourLife Spice Up Your Life]]", Rarity and Pinkie go to the upper-class city of Canterlot to fix a friendship problem. It turns out a father and daughter duo of [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Indian-inspired ponies]] are fighting because their restaurant is unpopular. Nopony visits their restaurant, the Tasty Treat, because it hasn't been rated yet, and the highly influential critic [[CausticCritic Zesty Gourmand]] dislikes it because the food is nonconformist compared to other restaurants in the area (which are all identical, right down to the decor). Pinkie, however, finds the other restaurants displeasing due to their small proportions and bland-tasting food. [[spoiler:In the end, after a grand reopening impresses the locals, all the restaurants go back to ''their'' thing, while Zesty is ridiculed and her opinion invalidated]].

* ''Series/GoodOmens'': Like his counterpart in the [[Literature/GoodOmens novel]], [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse Famine]] is responsible for high-end cuisine's small portions as a way of starving people. His introductory scene sees him dining with an assosciate at a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_gastronomy molecular gastronomy]] restaurant. The "first course" is a balloon full of lavender-scented air that the waiter sprays in their faces.