At odds over ‘homemade’
Some chefs call France’s label rules lenient
Customers of France’s restaurants now know whether they are eating frozen fries or genuine “homemade” French fries, as a new label to promote fresh produce came into force this week.
But the black-and-white “fait maison” logo, designed to reward chefs who do more than simply reheat precooked meals, has already been criticized in some quarters as a half-baked fudge that will keep consumers in the dark on just how “preprepared” their meal is.
There was a time when almost all French restaurants prepared their dishes from fresh ingredients. However, the Union of Hotel Industry Professions (UHIP) says 85 per cent of France’s 150,000 restaurants serve vacuumpacked and frozen food without telling customers.
They buy everything from boeuf bourguignon to tarte tatin from industrial producers, only to heat them in microwaves and serve them for 10 times their price.
The new logo in the shape of a casserole dish with a roof as a lid will now accompany individual dishes on the menu to indicate which were prepared and cooked in-house.
“We want to give clear, trustworthy and easy-tounderstand information to the consumer while giving credit to restaurants that make an effort,” said Carole Delga, the secretary of state in charge of consumption, saying that it would preserve the “art de vivre à la Française.”
But chefs are deeply divided over whether the label is too lenient and confusing for customers.
For example, while frozen fries cannot claim to be homemade in order to cut out fast-food outlets, all other frozen vegetables that are peeled, chopped and frozen can, as long as they go into a dish that is prepared on the premises.
The linchpin of the new rule is that homemade fare must be made on the premises only from “raw ingredients,” meaning “a food product having undergone no significant modification, including being heated, marinated, assembled or a combination of these procedures.”
But that definition allows for “smoked, salted, refrigerated, frozen or deep-frozen” produce as well as “vacuumpacked” food to be used. In Le Monde newspaper, restaurant critic JP Gené criticized a “dud decree” that pandered to frozen-food lobbies because “any frozen raw product from spinach stalks to shrimps can figure in a dish dubbed ‘homemade’?”
Hubert Jan, president of the restaurant branch of UMIH, the hospitality union, said: “It’s pretty clear the people who drew up this decree are not cooks. The work of kitchen professionals won’t be recognized. A tomato salad that arrives vacuum-packed and already in slices can be called ‘fait maison’.” But Delga said the dressing would have to be homemade for the tomatoes to merit the logo. Inspections on restaurants claiming to serve homemade fare will begin next year.