Put away the kiwis. Strike the pink peppercorns. Forget everything you were just beginning to like about vegetable pates and the grilled rare duck breast, magret de canard. The days of the nouvelle cuisine and its culinary trademarks are numbered. What the savviest chefs in France are cooking up now is being hailed as cuisine moderne, a blend of the classic and the nouvelle. Some observers prefer to call this new cooking actuelle (what is really being cooked today), while others describe it as libre (free), personnalisee (personalized) or, perhaps most appropriately, courante (trendy).
Although there is some argument as to...