EDINBURGH, Scotland – Foodies in Europe are all abuzz about a new book that claims the food culture that for centuries epitomized France as the culinary center of the universe is seriously on the wane. “Complacency, a weak economy and a taste for fast food are killing the French gastronomic tradition,” says Michael Steinberger in his new book, Au Revoir To All That.
We are further informed that France is now the second most profitable market in the world for McDonald’s.
I wrote in this space some time ago that I wouldn’t talk about my abstinence from fast food until a full year was up, but as I pass the half-year mark in keeping my New Year’s resolution about staying out of fast food restaurants, I wish to note that there are now more than 1,000 McDonald’s restaurants in France and the head of McDonald’s European operations (a Frenchman) will probably be the next chairman and CEO of the fast food empire.
(On the other hand, I can’t recall seeing a McDonald’s anywhere I’ve been in Scotland – and a fine Scottish name it is!)
This parallels a regrettable decline in the number of independent restaurants and small farms, as well as the disappearance of French cheese makers, specifically those that make cheese from raw milk (lait cru).
Any cheese connoisseur will tell you that the very essence of cheese appreciation is to be able to eat cheeses made from raw milk. But those artisans are disappearing, as are wine producers mostly because they can’t compete with mass-produced foods and the ease of fast food restaurants that now line almost every street throughout the country.
In an article about Steinberger’s book, The (London) Daily Telegraph reports that bistros, brasseries and cafes are going out of business by the thousands every year and equally alarming is the fact that small farms are disappearing at about the same rate.
Steinberger suggests that one of the key reasons is the virtual stagnation in France’s economy. “Anemic growth, high unemployment and stagnant living standards … coupled with a business environment distinctly hostile to business (such as) punitive tax rates and crippling regulation has wreaked havoc on France’s culinary industry.”
When an economy prospers, there is a parallel uptick in prosperity in the culinary industry as restaurants flourish and demand for better-quality foods increases.
France seems to have ceded its culinary leadership, at least in Europe, to Spain where there has been an explosion in the number of restaurants. Further, Spain’s chefs are at the forefront of the culinary world with their adventures in so-called molecular gastronomy. Even the English have their share of great chefs influencing food trends around the world.
Steinberger points out that “discerning palates have always been cultivated around the family dinner table … and all the great French chefs of the last half-century had their interest in cooking nurtured by mothers and grandmothers.” As more and more women in France join the workforce, fewer families are engaging in this longstanding French tradition.
The French wine industry is in tatters, too, and it’s getting worse. With more and more competition from wine-growing regions around the world, notably the U.S., Chile, South Africa and others, Steinberger says that thousands of producers in the revered regions of Bordeaux and Beaujolais are “destitute,” and that about one-third of wine producers in those regions will be driven out of business in the next few years.
Fortunately, it’s not all doom and gloom. There are a number of up-and-coming young French chefs who have recognized all of these issues, and they are creating a new French food culture with inventive dishes at affordable prices. There’s even a nickname for this movement – bistronomie, probably a reference to the classic French bistro tradition of serving the whole meal on one plate.
Lots of people over the years have turned their noses up at French cuisine, the haughtiness of waiters in French restaurants, the notorious tantrums staged in kitchens by French chefs. But we will all be the poorer if our culinary world loses the centrality of French culinary tradition.