Nouvelle cuisine (French, "new cuisine") is an approach to cooking and food presentation in French cuisine. In contrast to the older haute cuisine, nouvelle cuisine has lighter, more delicate dishes, and pretty presentation. It started in Paris in the 1970s, and by the 1980s was seen in London and New York. The movement is now almost worldwide.

The reasons are connected with modern business life, where long two-hour lunches are a thing of the past. Also, customers began to look for lighter food menus. Food critics Henri Gault and his colleagues André Gayot and Christian Millau put out a new restaurant guide, the Gault-Millau, or Le Nouveau Guide.

Gault and Millau listed ten characteristics of this new style of cooking. They were: