LETTER FROM PARIS : Burger's Revenge
Harriss, Joseph A.
leTTer from ParIS
Burger’s Revenge
by Joseph A. Harriss I know—old paris hands keep going on, ad nauseam, about how much better things used to be. Paree was really Paree, with a jaunty...
...And don’t get us started on the food...
...French trenchermen and the restaurants serving them have now seen the country’s culinary future and decided it works...
...Decent cheese is now at least as expensive as beef, forcing most French diners to choose...
...But besides a kitchen staffed with a numerous brigade of skilled chefs and apprentices, it also takes customers with the time, money, and taste to appreciate it, all of which are increasingly rare...
...How about those famous 400-odd kinds of cheese, each so subtly different in texture, aroma, appearance, and je-ne-sais-quoi that it’s worth dying for...
...As for eating out, le fast food is now so prevalent that the traditional four-course French meal, preceded by a leisurely aperitif and followed by coffee and digestif, should be classified an endangered 66 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor December 2008/January 2009 JoSePH a. HarrISS species...
...Especially the part about the food...
...Josepha.Harriss,an American writer in Paris, still has lunch at home with his wife...
...With virtually every corner café now calling itself a restaurant, patrons have to practice defensive dining, trying to decide which item on the menu is least likely to be botched or phonied up with the latest fad like mango chutney in the pot-au-feu...
...For that you can have duck fillets, juniper berries, and a dash of red wine on a sesame bun...
...Whether it will replace a savory pâté or salami between long halves of crusty, buttered baguette as the national sandwich remains to be seen...
...Restaurants from Paris to Saint-Tropez are getting upwards of $40 a pop for it...
...New burger recipe books fill the bookstores...
...In any case, the latest restaurant fad, le fooding, prizes atmosphere and background music over whatever happens to be on the plate...
...Eating habits here have finally caught up with the rest of the world...
...Now every self-respecting Paris trendsetter can talk knowledgeably of le ketchup, le pickle, le finger-food, and even, with a delicate shudder, le junk-food...
...The hell of it is, it’s true...
...As for the wives themselves, they no longer make their daily rounds to the local butcher’s, baker’s, fishmonger’s, and cheese shop for the freshest produce and the latest neighborhood gossip...
...You could take a tour of the town from the back platform for practically nothing, watching the rilling cobblestones drop behind like the wake of some urban cruise ship...
...For the moment, the current gastronomic/ philosophical debate is less over the revenge of the lowly burger than whether wine is a food or a condiment...
...And from the usual source, the USA...
...His latest book is About France (iUniverse...
...This was the stuff that inspired paeans from great American food writers in Paris like A. J. Liebling and Waverley Root...
...Or how about ground beef fillet topped with pan-seared foie gras, chanterelles, mayonnaise, and two tablespoons of olive oil...
...Literally, bad grub...
...leTTer from ParIS Burger’s Revenge by Joseph A. Harriss I know—old paris hands keep going on, ad nauseam, about how much better things used to be...
...Out of sight, figuratively and literally...
...with more complications piled on, it becomes the Star’s Caprice...
...Paree was really Paree, with a jaunty beret on every head, a baguette under every arm, a red-scarfed accordion player in every bistrot, lovers clinging under every bridge...
...Instead, they trip off once a week to an impersonal, cavernous hypermarket with 40 or more checkout counters...
...But French cuisine couldn’t resist the Decline of the West...
...December 2008/January 2009 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor 67...
...In their place are huge industrial producers going for the global market with bland, even pasteurized (pasteurized...
...By last year, the Big Mac had been officially enshrined at a major Paris show in the Grand Palais entitled “Objects of the Century...
...Consider that fewer and fewer Frenchmen any longer go home for the traditional lengthy lunch with their wives—followed by God-knows-what afterward...
...To be sure, there are still exceptions to the encroaching mediocrity, the few, the proud temples of haute cuisine where gourmets gather reverently for a stylized dining ritual which will cost them, as the French saying goes, the eyes in their head...
...Top-of-the-line nouveaux riches models, served on snowy white tablecloths, are jabbed with a silvery little lance set with a huge faux diamond...
...Or a fish version of bass fillets with exactly eight perfect mushrooms, 12 spinach leaves, 12 slices of dried tomato, and one red onion, sprinkled with fish stock, shallots, cream, and white wine...
...Today there are thousands, including one named Quick, which says it all...
...Of course, they didn’t cook up just any burger, but one so irresistibly chic, intricately complicated, and ethereally refined that it has become, as Le Figaro says, “the must-eat of the moment...
...And when they can afford it, it’s becoming harder to find because the small country producers who gave French cheese its cherished regional diversity are closing up shop and heading for the towns and cities...
...But oh so cheaply...
...Purely academic, since the French are abandoning wine in favor of sodas with their hamburgers...
...A recent book is symptomatic: Camembert: A National Myth...
...There they stock up on frozen and canned foods, along with bread wrapped in plastic and tasting much the same...
...B ut despair not of french cuisine, help is on the way...
...The ominous new word going around today: la malbouffe...
...magazines give tips on where to find the best buns (something Frenchmen used to know instinctively...
...At the Hotel Prince de Galles on Avenue George V, they serve the Love Me Burger in tribute to Elvis...
...It began a while back, when McDonald’s golden arches started to spread, almost surreptitiously and with a certain amount of rear-guard resistance from local gastronomes, across the landscape, with Burger King hard on its heels...
...It didn’t take long for some of France’s top chefs to spot the trend...
...Classical French cookery, though becoming harder to find among all the junk, can still be an unforgettable experience...
...And if you dare peek into the kitchen, you will glimpse in microcosm one of France’s burgeoning social problems: from cooks to bottle washers, most of the help will likely be recently arrived from Africa and working illegally...
...Unwitting proof is the current government campaign to have French cooking added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list, like some archaeological dig dating from a long-lost civilization...
...cheeses, which connoisseurs used to consider an abomination...
...C’est le hamburger...
...There used to be only a handful of fast-food outlets lurking in all of France...
...Rejoice, then, all ye faithful, that France has finally come to appreciate our contribution to world gastronomy...
...And the platform buses...
...From workingmen’s bistrots to raucous brasseries, you could just point to something on the menu and be sure of a copious, well-prepared meal at a fair price...
Vol. 41 • January 2009 • No. 10
