They Eat Horses, Don't They?

by Piu Marie Eatwell

  On the other hand, the pungent perfume that inevitably lingers on the breath after garlic consumption has earned the ‘stinking rose’ as much opprobrium in history as its medicinal qualities have earned it praise. Thus in Ancient Greece, those who had consumed garlic were forbidden to enter into the Temple of Cybele; and in the Middle Ages, King Alfonso of Castile ordered that any of his knights who ate onion or garlic were forbidden to come to court for a month.31 Garlic, so goes an old Indian saying, is as good as ten mothers… for sending the girls away.

  Eat garlic. It revives your body and keeps importunate folk away.

  ALEXANDRE VIALATTE, FRENCH WRITER (1901–71)

  More than any other herb (with the possible exception of basil and oregano in Italy), garlic has long been associated with Continental cuisine – and, consequently, its pungent odour with dubious Continental exhalations. Thus American slang terms for garlic in the 1920s included ‘Italian perfume’, ‘halitosis’, and ‘Bronx vanilla’. Alexandre Dumas, in his Grand dictionnaire de cuisine (1873), observed that ‘everybody recognizes the smell of garlick, except the person who has eaten it, and cannot therefore understand why all turn away at his approach’. He also noted that the cuisine of Provence in particular is ‘based on garlick’, and that the air of Provence is ‘impregnated with the perfume of this herb’. Without garlic, French cuisine would be lacking in countless signature dishes: aïoli (a Provençal garlic mayonnaise, traditionally served with the croutons that top the classic fish soup or bouillabaisse), moules à la crème, fondue, and of course the celebrated Burgundy snails or escargots de Bourgogne, typically served wallowing in a garlicky, buttery pool. Garlic is also a vital ingredient in some French cheeses, most notably perhaps in the case of Boursin, the squidgy garlicky spread that has travelled to the shelves of most of the world’s supermarkets.

  Although there are over 300 types of garlic grown in the world, garlic in England and the United States is usually divided into two broad categories – the ‘soft-necked’ or common-or-garden variety, most commonly found in supermarkets, and the ‘hard-necked’ variety with a stalk, considered the connoisseur’s version. In France, a distinction is drawn not so much between soft-necked and hard-necked varieties, but rather according to colour and time of harvesting: the small, hard heads of ‘white’ garlic are generally seen in street markets in the winter, and therefore known as l’ail d’automne, whereas the more luscious, rosy heads of ‘pink’ garlic usually appear in the spring, and are consequently known as l’ail de printemps. (The French word for an old-fashioned heavy-knit jumper – le chandail – actually comes from an abbreviation of marchand d’ail, or garlic-seller, and derives from the jerseys that were worn by garlic-sellers in the old fruit and vegetable market at Les Halles in Paris at the turn of the last century).32 Three varieties of French garlic have been granted protected geographical status: the white garlic harvested in the regions of Lomagne (Tarn-et-Garonne) and the Drôme, and the pink garlic of Lautrec (Tarn). Of these, the most luxurious is the rich and oozingly odoriferous Pink Rose of Lautrec. Farmed in the region for centuries, according to legend it arrived there in the Middle Ages, when a travelling merchant was unable to pay his hotel bill, and paid instead with a few bulbs of this potent specimen. Planted in the ground, the bulbs gave birth to a powerfully pungent variety that, hand-picked and trussed in a traditional bunch or manouille, now finds its way to restaurants around the globe.

  All in all, garlic is to traditional French cuisine what the beret is to the Basque Country: the one is unimaginable without the other. And just as garlic is indissolubly linked to French cuisine, so, in the popular imagination, is garlic breath linked to the Frenchman. Only a few decades ago, a voyage on the Paris Métro necessitated plunging into a malodorous miasma of garlic, Gitanes and cheap perfume – a fact attested by a US military pamphlet issued in 1945 to address complaints about the French made by disgruntled American servicemen stationed in France during the Second World War. Entitled 112 Gripes About the French, the pamphlet attempts to answer the GIs’ grievances with reasoned responses. One of the commonest gripes listed is the fact that ‘you ride on the subway and the smell almost knocks you out, Garlic, sweat – and perfume!’ In response, the pamphlet authors concede that ‘French subways today are overcrowded, hot, untidy, and smell bad.’ But, they argue, ‘You smell garlic because the French, who are superb cooks, use more of it than we do.’33

  A PUNGENT REVOLUTION (skip)

  A curious feature of French garlic is that the varieties are named after some of the months in the French Revolutionary Calendar, a bizarre experiment in timekeeping introduced by the Revolutionary government, which lasted for twelve years, from 1793 to 1805, before it was wisely abandoned. French varieties of garlic thus have such exotic names as ‘Germidour’ (from Germinal, the first month of spring), ‘Messidrome’ (from Messidor, the first month of summer) and ‘Fructidor’ (the final summer month). The principal aim of the Revolutionary calendar was to rationalize and remove all trace of religion from timekeeping. Time began from the date of the Revolution, the twelve months had their traditional names replaced with ‘poetic’ French equivalents evoking the weather around Paris, and saints’ days were replaced with patriotic days dedicated to French flora and fauna, crops and proletarian tools. French citizens of the new Republic found themselves celebrating the day of the Plough, Pickaxe, Grub-Hoe, Parsnip, Cauliflower and, of course, Garlic. Relics of the Revolutionary Calendar live on in French nomenclature to this day, including the famous dish ‘Lobster Thermidor’, and the ships of the ‘Floréal’ class in the French Navy.

  Such subterranean odours, however, are now scents of the past. The Paris underground no longer oozes with the juices of the stinking rose (although it does have plenty of other nasty niffs – more about which in a later chapter). These days, it would appear that the French are (statistically at least) no longer the champion garlic-munchers of national stereotype. The biggest world consumers of garlic today are not the French – or even the Italians – but the South Koreans, who eat a startling 10 kilos of the stuff per capita annually.34 Nor are the French even in the top rank of world garlic producers. The global garlic production league is in fact headed by China, which produces 75 per cent of the world’s garlic (a stinking 12.5 million tons), followed by India and South Korea.35 The French garlic industry, in fact, is a mere drop in the ocean of garlic production. If you buy your garlic in England or France, chances are that it will have come from Spain, Argentina, China or Egypt: in 2006 alone, the UK imported some 25,000 tons of fresh garlic from China. Garlic is even being farmed commercially (albeit on a relatively small scale) on the Isle of Wight.

  He added that a Frenchman in the train had given him a great sandwich that so stank of garlic that he had been inclined to throw it at the fellow’s head.

  FORD MADOX FORD, ENGLISH NOVELIST (1873–1939), PROVENCE

  The reality is that garlic consumption in France has taken a nosedive in recent years. This is particularly the case with the younger generation, who are keener on hamburgers and sushi than on bouillabaisse with aioli or gastropods swimming in garlicky butter. Recent figures show that the biggest consumers of garlic in France today are the elderly and middle-aged, with younger people and families with young children at the bottom of the consumption ladder.36 Conversely, the market in garlic in the USA has increased: Americans eat three times as much of it as they did in the 1980s. Doubtless some of this rise is explained by the Anglo-Saxons rediscovering the near-magical health-promoting properties of this most aromatic of the alliums.37

  Could garlic be quietly going the same way as French regional fromages, and if so, why hasn’t there been more of an outcry? Perhaps because there are simply too many French food wars being waged right now. In the heat of the bloodier battles to save French cheese and wine, another pungent Gallic tradition seems to be drawing its last breath, without anyone even kicking up a stink about it…

  Myth Evaluation: Partly true. French people h
ave traditionally eaten a lot of garlic, but the quantity they consume annually is decreasing, and comes nowhere near the amount eaten by the world’s greatest garlic consumers, the South Koreans.

  THE FRENCH DON’T EAT FAST FOOD

  Fast food is a perverse pleasure. Firstly, an intellectual ecstasy: the indulgence of wallowing in political incorrectness.

  PHILIPPE DELERM, DICKENS, BARBE À PAPA ET AUTRES NOURRITURES DELECTABLES (2005)

  The French never eat fast food. Of course they don’t. For the average French person, lunch is a leisurely meal partaken with a carafe of wine and good company, on a sunny bistro terrace. Children enjoy four-course lunches prepared by their school canteen and showcasing France’s finest foods, featuring foie gras and a rotating cheese course. The French do not grab a wilting sandwich filled with plastic cheese or nitrate-soaked ham and wolf it down at their desk while trying desperately to finish yesterday’s target product profile, answer the telephone and fix an appointment for their child with the behavioural psychologist. The French don’t do fast food. Jamais!

  To understand the position of fast food in France today, one has to look at recent history. The French have coined a special word for fast food: malbouffe. And, France being a nation of Cartesian dualisms, malbouffe naturally has its opposite – bonne bouffe. The battle of the good and bad bouffes for French stomachs has swung this way and that over the years. The first blow was landed by a group of French farmers led by a certain José Bové in 1999, who drove their tractors through an early McDonald’s restaurant then being built in Millau, in the Midi-Pyrénées. The farmers were protesting against US restrictions on the importation of Roquefort cheese: consequently, they took revenge on the Temple of the Plastic Slice by throwing bricks through the windows and handing out Roquefort to the crowd of gathered onlookers. Martyred by a jail sentence, Bové became a cult figure for French resistance against the American-led invasion of malbouffe: a diminutive firebrand with a handlebar moustache, he provided the land of Astérix with a real-life, plucky Gallic defender against McDomination. After Millau, there was a rash of McDonald’s ‘incidents’ in France, including the dumping of manure and rotten apples in McDonald’s restaurants and the kidnapping of Ronald McDonald effigies by sundry eco-warriors, one of whom accused the clown of being ‘the subliminal ambassador of mercantile empires of standardization and conformism’.38

  The response of McDonald’s France was quickly (and smartly) to change the subliminal messages it was sending. Out went the massive telegraph poles surmounted by golden arches that signalled the conquest of the French countryside by Uncle Sam, along with the neon lighting and garish red and yellow American diner fittings. In came ambient lounge music, plush velvet sofas and armchairs, and discreet arches set against a green forest background. Burgers were offered with a choice of AOP cheeses from Cantal to Camembert, while wholegrain French mustard was an optional extra. The McBaguette was born, along with the McCroque-Monsieur and Le Charolais.*

  * Charolais is the name of the ancient, distinctive breed of white beef cattle reared in Burgundy since the seventeenth century. McDonald’s introduced the Le Charolais burger in its restaurants in 2011, made of meat from French livestock. It was the first time that a McDonald’s burger in France had been named after the origins of the beef it contained.

  McCafés were added to the existing McDonald’s restaurants, offering opulent coffees, macaroons from the luxury French chain Ladurée, and even waiter service. The message was clear: McDonald’s France might be Born in the USA, but it was Made in France. And the strategy worked. Today, France is the second-biggest market in the world for McDonald’s, after America.39 Every day, 1.7 million French people eat at McDonald’s; and the chain turns over €4.2 billion a year.40 Four out of five French people know the famous McDonald’s French slogan, venez comme vous êtes (‘come as you are’). The French are clearly lovin’ it. Burger King (which, when McDonald’s entered the market, was one of its major competitors) made the fatal mistake of selling the American dining experience, rather than cannily going native. It didn’t stand a chance. The Whopper was shown the door by the Big Mac, and today there’s no doubt who’s the boss. (McDonald’s sole competitor in the French hamburger market now is the Belgian chain Quick, although KFC has a big presence, along with Subway. After fifteen years’ absence Burger King returned to France in December 2012, but it faced a tough road ahead competing with the Golden Arches.)

  The most spectacularly daring marketing ploy of all was when McDonald’s France first took a stand at Paris’ massive agricultural fair, or Salon d’agriculture, in 2001. The Salon d’agriculture is Paris’ annual encounter with rural France, the place where politicians come to be photographed shaking hands with farmers of la France profonde and bourgeois Parisian families come to goggle at the amount of poo that can exit the back end of a pig. Nobody could believe it when McDonald’s announced it was entering the dragon’s den. However, dire predictions of a repeat of the Millau bloodbath were not borne out. The McDonald’s stand was a resounding success, and was even described as ‘exemplary’. And why would anyone want to complain, anyway? McDonald’s buys hundreds of thousands of tons of meat and potatoes from French farmers every year. It is, in fact, one of the principal purchasers of French beef.41 Nobody in their right mind throws a brick at their best client. Not even José Bové. Indeed, Bové could be said to have done McDonald’s a favour: he goaded Ronald McDonald into learning to speak French, thus winning the hearts (and the stomachs) of the French populace.

  Since the furore over McDomination in the 1990s and Ronald McDonald’s subsequent acceptance, the consumption of fast food in France has skyrocketed. By 2010, fast-food accounted for 7 out of 10 meals eaten outside the French home, and the length of the average French meal had gone down to 31 minutes, from 1 hour 38 minutes in 1975.42 The French are now the second-largest consumers of hamburgers in Europe, still lagging some way behind the British, but way ahead of the Germans, Spanish and Italians.43 And as the nation’s fast-food industry has ballooned, so has its waistline: a 2007 study by the French government statistics and research institute INSEE (Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques) found that over a third of French people were overweight, including 16 per cent of young people.44 The figures are as yet party-balloon size compared with the hot-air balloon statistics coming from the USA and UK, but they are set to match them by 2025. Anxious about a future generation of Obélixes gobbling up the country’s resources and health service, the French government has introduced legislation to ban machines dispensing colas and crisps at school and the advertising of sugary snacks during children’s television. In October 2011, in the Val d’Oise town of Franconville – an area with a historically high child obesity rate – parents presented a petition to stop a McDonald’s being built strategically at the intersection of local schools and the town’s sports and leisure centre. Even France’s answer to Jamie Oliver – the television chef Cyril Lignac – has descended on schools in the banlieues (the deprived suburbs on the outskirts of major cities) to try to persuade recalcitrant French teenagers to abandon KFC and return to the school canteen.*

  * Cyril Lignac – a suave thirty-something whose flick and designer stubble are the stuff of bourgeois housewives’ dreams – hates being compared to Jamie Oliver. In fact, he was accused of disparaging Mr Oliver as a cook who makes ‘nosh’, as opposed to himself, a chef trained in the highest gastronomic tradition (an allegation that he subsequently denied).

  Not everybody in France is hatin’ it, though. The fast-food industry does have some surprising apologists – not least a coterie of French intellectuals. For example, in 2010 François Simon – France’s most feared restaurant critic – went ‘undercover’ in a McDonald’s restaurant to check out a Big Tasty for the television channel ARTE,† and came out with the surprising verdict that, although the ‘field of flavours’ was ‘quite restricted’, it wasn’t too bad.

  † McDo, une passion française, documen
tary by Stanislas Kraland, broadcast 29 December 2010 (ARTE France/Doc en Stock).

  And he reserved the highest praise for the Caramel McFlurry topped with crispy nougatine. In characteristically laconic and blackly humorous style, he summed up his opinion thus: ‘At McDonald’s, you can slum it. There are no words to describe it – it’s pure emotion, the ultimate in junk food. For me, an ice-cream should have a perversely seductive side, in the ways it sickens you and sets you off on an internal monologue of the soul… ’ Not without a soupçon of irony, he acknowledged that ‘there is in the depths of my soul a moron who adores this stuff; I must feed this moron regularly, and obey his commands.’

  A PRINCE OF GASTRONOMES FOR THE FAST FOOD AGE (skip)

  François Simon (b.1953) is one of the most feared and venerated French food critics writing today. French restaurateurs quake in their shoes to read his waspish reviews in the French newspaper Le Figaro, and it has been whispered that he was the inspiration for the exacting food critic Anton Ego in the 2007 Pixar film Ratatouille.

  Simon once described a meal at the Michelin restaurant Guy Savoy as ‘a three-star crucifixion’, lambasting M. Savoy for serving his signature artichoke and truffle soup out of season. He described the chef Marc Veyrat, who achieved the feat of a perfect 20/20 score in the Gault-Millau guide, as a ‘fake peasant’ with megalomaniac tendencies. Simon has the peculiar distinction of never revealing his face fully in the media, to enable him to preserve his anonymity for the purposes of restaurant reviews.