French MPS debate restaurant standards
Many in nation’s culinary trade use foods produced in factories
PARIS — Daniel Fasquelle wants the world to know the dirty secret in the kitchens of many French restaurants: they don’t cook their own food.
The French parliamentarian is pushing a law to restrict the use of the label “restaurant” to establishments that prepare their food from scratch. He reckons many of France’s eateries wouldn’t cut it because they reheat industrially prepared foods.
If you’ve ever wondered why French classics such as a “moelleux au chocolat” or a “tarte tatin” tastes the same in Paris restaurants, it’s probably because it is. About a third of French restaurants say they use industrial food, and Fasquelle and other officials fear declining standards at the nation’s 150,000 restaurants threaten a tourism industry that represents seven per cent of France’s $2.8 trillion economy.
Fasquelle says his model is a 1998 law limiting use of the word “boulangerie” to bakeries that make their own dough, which has been credited with an improvement in French bread.
His restaurant push is an amendment to a consumerprotection law being debated in parliament, and was rejected in committee. Pascale Got, a Socialist MP who had entered a similar amendment, withdrew hers after opposition from the government. Both plan to reintroduce their amendments when the bill returns from the Senate later this year.
Their initiative resonates with Chef Pascal Brot.
Brot arrives every morning at 7:15 a.m. to turn on the ovens at Le Mesturet, a 130-year-old restaurant near the Paris stock market. The daily deliveries and six other kitchen workers arrive from about 8 a.m. for the morning-long process of dicing vegetables, preparing meats, and making sauces.
After lunch service, Brot, 48, does his orders for the next day and then oversees the 3:30 p.m. arrival of the dinner shift. At 11:30 p.m., the last staff member leaves the 130-seat restaurant, after preparing desserts for the next day.
Restaurants that serve up reheated foods have it easier.
Demand from them has spawned an industry of prepackaged food suppliers and logistics-services providers.
Davigel, a unit of Nestle SA, employs 3,000 people in France, where it has 66,000 clients for its 3,000 products.
This week’s online offers include dishes such as lentils and sausage for 6.50 euros a kilogram and Provençal-style pork stew for 7.82 euros a kilo. The price for “moelleux au chocolat,” a chocolate cake with a runny warm interior, wasn’t listed because it’s not on special. It comes in a box of 18, and needs a minute in the microwave, the website says.
A survey by restaurant association Synhorcat said 31 per cent of restaurants use some industrially made dishes.