How America Killed French Cuisine

Photo illustration Freedom fries lovers, rejoice! The growing American influence over French cooking has turned Paris into a city of bad baguettes and processed cheese.

Like bagels in New York or Guinness in Dublin, bread is something you feel you can count on in Paris. So, like a crazed and bloated Goldilocks suffering from OCD, on a recent trip to Paris I found myself on an Odysseyean quest for a decent baguette, and issuing one withering review after another to anyone who’d listen: too dense; too airy; soggy crust; enough crust to wield as a WMD; cornmeal-textured center; cotton-stuffing center.

The City of Lights, I found, had become infused with mediocre, slap-dash, overpriced fare that was threatening to permanently dim its centuries-long culinary luminescence.

France is at a crossroads in the kitchen. Consider these sobering statistics: Wine consumption has plummeted by half since the 1960s, and winemakers in Bordeaux, Beaujolais, and Langueduc are going bankrupt left and right. Some say that a third of Langueduc’s 10,000 producers will have to close shop in the next five years. And while practically all French cheese was made from raw milk 40 years ago, now only 10 percent is.

Trips to randomly selected cheesemongers often produced surprisingly tepid results—goat cheese was by far the worst across-the-board disappointment.

As French culture has seeped out of its food, American culture has crept in. About 200,000 cafés flourished in France in 1960, while roughly 41,000 struggle to remain in business today. This isn’t due to a national shunning of coffee—five years ago, Starbucks invaded Paris, and it recently opened its 50th French store in, appropriately enough, Paris’ Disneyland. Meanwhile, by 2007, France was the second-most profitable market in the world for McDonald’s (there’s even one on the Champs-Élysées) with an increase in revenue of 11 percent. Last year, while roughly 3,000 independently owned restaurants closed their doors, more than 1,115 McDonald's thrived.

“France invariably claims that it wants to safeguard its culture,” says Michael Steinberger, wine correspondent for Slate and author of Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine and the End of France (Bloomsbury, June 2009). “But the government has acted in ways that have demolished its ability to maintain cultural patrimony. Economically, many of the decisions that have been made have been absolutely crushing to the culinary industry.”

Preparing for my trip to France, I was blissfully ignorant of the fray and just looking forward to eating some delicious Roquefort and Pur chèvre. What I didn’t realize is that Paris is no longer a leisurely city with a rhythm and culture ruled by its inhabitants’ gurgling stomachs and wine-soaked whims. “Thirty years ago in France, visitors encountered the proverbial moveable feast,” Steinberger says. “But now you look at how we eat in New York and San Francisco—the qualities of the restaurants, vegetables, breads and cheeses—and you see the gap is narrowing.”

In Au Revoir to All That, Steinberger contends that an unholy trifecta has led to the stagnation of cuisine in France, and the victorious rise of Spain—and to a lesser extent, America, the U.K., and Japan—as the world capitals of culinary creativity. Steinberger believes complacency is a factor. “When you’re the king of the hill for centuries, it’s hard to stay vigilant. You think you’re going to remain there forever.” Changing social mores, like more women joining the workforce and fewer meals eaten at home, have also contributed to the decline. But the main culprit, he believes, is economics.

“Running a restaurant in Paris has become a bloody economic nightmare,” Steinberger asserts. Crippling levels of taxation, the 35-hour work week, and the 19.6 percent value-added tax levied on restaurants (reduced to 5.5 percent last week) have cooked up a “toxic stew” that has been brewing since the late 1970s. “Chefs may have their three stars from Michelin, but to support their flagships they have to run out and open a bunch of ancillary restaurants. The farther away they are from the flame, the less creating they’re doing.”

To be fair, there is still excellent, affordable food to be had in Paris—I had many wonderful meals. I had the best baguette of my life—and a crusty, chewy, miraculously tangy loaf of sourdough Poilâne (8 Rue du Cherche-Midi, Sixth Arr.; www.poilane.fr). And it would be tough to beat the traditional Lyonnaise cooking (outside of Lyon) found at the laid-back, ancient wine bar Le Rubis (Le Rubis, 10 Rue du Marche St-Honore), which was bursting at its slightly fraying seams by noon with regulars, from dust-covered construction workers to men and women in bespoke suits.

But in general, we found that many of our meals blended together in a heavy beurre blanc haze. Stumbling blindly into one of the countless artisanal boulangeries on the streets of Paris, as noted above, rarely ended well. The result, too often, was a sub-par baguette, the innards of which tasted like cotton stuffing with a sprinkling of dustballs, and a top-heavy, unevenly cooked, cracked crust. Trips to randomly selected (but auspicious looking) cheesemongers often produced surprisingly tepid results—goat cheese was by far the worst across-the-board disappointment.