Is French cuisine in the process of being largely replaced by junk food? The debate is nothing new. In Gaullist France, processed industrial food was a nightmare for food lovers, who saw motorway restaurants triumphing over Michelin-starred establishments. Then came the onslaught of McDonald’s, Quick, and Burger King, torn down with diggers by angry farmers. Today, the enemy goes by the names of Tasty Crousty and Master Poulet, fast food chains flooding France’s youth with reconstituted chicken pieces coated in an implausible layer of stuff meant to crunch when you eat them.
The controversy is as old as the hills, but it has taken a political turn with the involvement of the newly elected Socialist mayor of Saint-Ouen, Karim Bouamrane, who had the outlandish idea of fighting against the establishment of one of these sinister, standardised shops selling cheap calories in his town.
It all began with a video posted on X showing the new mayor disparaging the contents—rather depressing, one must admit—of a tray sold by the Tasty Crousty chain. At issue: the opening, scheduled for April, of a new branch of the chain in Saint-Ouen, accused of selling “junk food that is dangerous to health.” As soon as the video went online, Bouamrane became the target of a witch-hunt orchestrated by the pack from La France Insoumise (LFI), flanked by its most loyal supporters: the immigrant and culturally alienated youth of the suburbs who make up the bulk of the clientele at Crousty-whatnot, this ‘new France’ so dear to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. LFI accused the mayor of classism, snobbery, and promoting a cuisine inaccessible to working-class neighbourhoods. Rappers and MMA stars also came along to sing their little verse in praise of street food, which, if you are to believe them, is the culinary masterpiece of the 21st century.
Things are not straightforward: by attacking a culinary symbol of an impoverished population of immigrant origin—who, incidentally, elected him as mayor—Bouamrane finds himself in the same camp as the heroic but reactionary defenders of bœuf bourguignon and other lovers of petits lardons, a position that is uncomfortable to say the least. On April 30th, on CNews, the columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté expressed his despair at the prospect of a kind of “great culinary replacement” looming. As a socialist, it is difficult for the mayor of Saint-Ouen to accept having such supporters in his honourable struggle.
What makes these fast-food restaurants so successful? The culinary critique is easily done. We’re a long way from the heyday of Brillat-Savarin, the master of French haute cuisine who loved to extol the virtues of truffled squabs in the style of Voltaire and La Rochefoucauld. For customers interviewed by Le Monde, the appeal of the Crousty thing boils down to two words: “It’s cheap and it’s quick.” There’s also the plastering-and-painting version, again in two words: “It’s compact and it fills you up”. The next stage is the multivitamin substance that allows you to nourish yourself in a single effective bite, an old technological fantasy we thought had disappeared since Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In Emmanuel Macron’s France, sociologist Jérôme Fourquet warns us, there is one indisputable fact: the country is becoming impoverished; even McDonald’s has become a luxury item. That is how far the standard of living for the French has fallen.
But whilst this observation is valid, it is not sufficient, and it is important not to misdiagnose the problem. By championing the virtues of a bag of fried chicken, a certain section of the Left imagines itself following in the footsteps of Marx and Zola and sees in it a revival of the class struggle, updated to defend the ‘racialised’ poor. They call upon their experts, who condemn the evil thoughts of the wicked bourgeoisie—bourgeois and racist. “Behind the argument for ‘eating well’ lies a form of dietary paternalism, which believes that we must educate these poor people who eat poorly,” protests political scientist Rémi Lefebvre. “What is being judged are the tastes of the working classes, who are often racialised,” adds Sylvie Tissot, a lecturer at the University of Paris 8 specialising in “urban policy, socio-spatial segregation, and gentrification.”
That faction of the left only accepts what fits its agenda. Having grown up in a town teeming with miners and workers, I know that the traditional family meal was sacred to them. The cost price of a marrowbone simmered in a pot-au-feu with a turnip and a potato will always be less than the 9 euros of Super-Crousty’s ‘all-inclusive’ menu.
The trade in reconstituted chicken thrives on a rootless population to whom French cuisine, even the simplest and most popular, means absolutely nothing, neither in their dreams nor on their plates. It is in this respect that it is reprehensible, and not merely for reasons of cost and nutritional score. The great food replacement is not just a matter of finances but also, and above all, of culture. The far left, which defends the ketchup-dipped chicken stick, is not merely defending, with apparent social conscience, the purchasing power of Master Poulet’s customers; it is bolstering its voters and, once again, spitting its venom at the image of a France it despises.
After the French Canon, the chicken war. Clearly, in France, cooking has never been so political.
France’s Great Culinary Replacement: From Escargot to Reconstituted Chicken
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Is French cuisine in the process of being largely replaced by junk food? The debate is nothing new. In Gaullist France, processed industrial food was a nightmare for food lovers, who saw motorway restaurants triumphing over Michelin-starred establishments. Then came the onslaught of McDonald’s, Quick, and Burger King, torn down with diggers by angry farmers. Today, the enemy goes by the names of Tasty Crousty and Master Poulet, fast food chains flooding France’s youth with reconstituted chicken pieces coated in an implausible layer of stuff meant to crunch when you eat them.
The controversy is as old as the hills, but it has taken a political turn with the involvement of the newly elected Socialist mayor of Saint-Ouen, Karim Bouamrane, who had the outlandish idea of fighting against the establishment of one of these sinister, standardised shops selling cheap calories in his town.
It all began with a video posted on X showing the new mayor disparaging the contents—rather depressing, one must admit—of a tray sold by the Tasty Crousty chain. At issue: the opening, scheduled for April, of a new branch of the chain in Saint-Ouen, accused of selling “junk food that is dangerous to health.” As soon as the video went online, Bouamrane became the target of a witch-hunt orchestrated by the pack from La France Insoumise (LFI), flanked by its most loyal supporters: the immigrant and culturally alienated youth of the suburbs who make up the bulk of the clientele at Crousty-whatnot, this ‘new France’ so dear to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. LFI accused the mayor of classism, snobbery, and promoting a cuisine inaccessible to working-class neighbourhoods. Rappers and MMA stars also came along to sing their little verse in praise of street food, which, if you are to believe them, is the culinary masterpiece of the 21st century.
Things are not straightforward: by attacking a culinary symbol of an impoverished population of immigrant origin—who, incidentally, elected him as mayor—Bouamrane finds himself in the same camp as the heroic but reactionary defenders of bœuf bourguignon and other lovers of petits lardons, a position that is uncomfortable to say the least. On April 30th, on CNews, the columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté expressed his despair at the prospect of a kind of “great culinary replacement” looming. As a socialist, it is difficult for the mayor of Saint-Ouen to accept having such supporters in his honourable struggle.
What makes these fast-food restaurants so successful? The culinary critique is easily done. We’re a long way from the heyday of Brillat-Savarin, the master of French haute cuisine who loved to extol the virtues of truffled squabs in the style of Voltaire and La Rochefoucauld. For customers interviewed by Le Monde, the appeal of the Crousty thing boils down to two words: “It’s cheap and it’s quick.” There’s also the plastering-and-painting version, again in two words: “It’s compact and it fills you up”. The next stage is the multivitamin substance that allows you to nourish yourself in a single effective bite, an old technological fantasy we thought had disappeared since Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In Emmanuel Macron’s France, sociologist Jérôme Fourquet warns us, there is one indisputable fact: the country is becoming impoverished; even McDonald’s has become a luxury item. That is how far the standard of living for the French has fallen.
But whilst this observation is valid, it is not sufficient, and it is important not to misdiagnose the problem. By championing the virtues of a bag of fried chicken, a certain section of the Left imagines itself following in the footsteps of Marx and Zola and sees in it a revival of the class struggle, updated to defend the ‘racialised’ poor. They call upon their experts, who condemn the evil thoughts of the wicked bourgeoisie—bourgeois and racist. “Behind the argument for ‘eating well’ lies a form of dietary paternalism, which believes that we must educate these poor people who eat poorly,” protests political scientist Rémi Lefebvre. “What is being judged are the tastes of the working classes, who are often racialised,” adds Sylvie Tissot, a lecturer at the University of Paris 8 specialising in “urban policy, socio-spatial segregation, and gentrification.”
That faction of the left only accepts what fits its agenda. Having grown up in a town teeming with miners and workers, I know that the traditional family meal was sacred to them. The cost price of a marrowbone simmered in a pot-au-feu with a turnip and a potato will always be less than the 9 euros of Super-Crousty’s ‘all-inclusive’ menu.
The trade in reconstituted chicken thrives on a rootless population to whom French cuisine, even the simplest and most popular, means absolutely nothing, neither in their dreams nor on their plates. It is in this respect that it is reprehensible, and not merely for reasons of cost and nutritional score. The great food replacement is not just a matter of finances but also, and above all, of culture. The far left, which defends the ketchup-dipped chicken stick, is not merely defending, with apparent social conscience, the purchasing power of Master Poulet’s customers; it is bolstering its voters and, once again, spitting its venom at the image of a France it despises.
After the French Canon, the chicken war. Clearly, in France, cooking has never been so political.
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