Friday, September 6, 2013

France and food


France gets bout of national indigestion over restaurant rules


The “fait maison” or “home-made” legislation, which will go to the senate following lower house approval in June, comes in response to what many people inFrance perceive as rapidly declining restaurant standards in a nation where cuisine has long been a synonym for culture itself.
In April, the Synhorcat association of hoteliers, restaurateurs and caterers horrified France’s traditional foodies when it found that 31 per cent of all French sit-down restaurants now use industrially prepared ingredients in their kitchens.
Of those, industrially-prepared food – from frozen vegetables to sauces in sachets and even fully prepared dishes – accounted for a quarter of all the food they served.
Barely a month later, France’s Gira Conseil, a Paris-based food consultancy, discovered another fly in the soup: fast-food sales had overtaken sit-down restaurant sales for the first time. The “haute”, it seemed, was fast disappearing from “haute cuisine”.
Bernard Boutboul, Gira Conseil’s founder and general manager, suggests that much of the change has to do with rapidly shifting lifestyles as France, at times begrudgingly, learns to live with globalisation.
One consequence is that lunch breaks have shrunk from an average of one hour and 40 minutes 20 years ago to just 22 minutes today, according to insurer Malakoff Médéric – a fact that has inevitably taken its toll on the three-course classic with default glass of red. “The French are becoming more American,” says Mr Boutboul.
Pressured by shorter lunch breaks, and hit by Europe’s economic woes, which figures this week showed has pushed the number of unemployed in France to above 3m for the first time, it is little wonder that struggling restaurateurs have looked for ways to reduce costs.
Lunch breaks have shrunk from an average of one hour and 40 minutes 20 years ago to just 22 minutes today
Off-premises food suppliers to the restaurant industry such as Métro and Brake France, whose website offers “3,500 products with one click”, have seen sales soar.
Parliament passed a law that forced any establishment calling itself a “boulangerie” to make and bake its bread on site. Many credited that legislation with improving standards.
But as senators prepare to debate the proposals, restaurateurs and chefs are divided. Some industry voices are worried that the new measures will drive up costs while confusing tourists, many of whom consider French cuisine one of the country’s principal attractions.
Others believe that lawmakers should go further by limiting the use of the word restaurant to establishments that prepare all their food on site. If that idea finds traction, next weeks debate could be merely the entrée.
Copyright The Finan

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