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A
book by one of the most widely read restaurant critics in France
that promised to dish the dirt on the country’s entire food
scene was too appetizing a temptation to pass up.
Bon Appétit,
Messieurs is by Léo Fourneau, the culinary nom
de guerre of an investigative journalist, Thierry Wolton,
who claims that he managed to preserve his anonymity for the 15
years he was Elle magazine’s food critic. The pseudonym
is a double pun: a fourneau is a cooking stove, and les
hauts fourneaux (a homophone for Léo Fourneau) is
a blast furnace.
Fourneau
gives the cozy world of French gastronomy a serious blast with
his scattergun, first taking his confraternity of critics to task
(unlike Léo, they don’t strive for anonymity and
expect free meals and special treatment) and then giving the top
chefs and their restaurants the full treatment. This is followed
by a potted history of French gastronomy, a whistle-stop tour
of the battlefield of the ancients and moderns, running right
up to his wistfully envious description of the “hypermodern”
cooking of chefs like Catalan Ferran Adrià (of El Bulli),
Briton Heston Blumenthal (Fat Duck) and American Thomas Keller
(French Laundry).
The pioneering
spirit of these chefs, he says, is absent from France largely
because of the heavy hand of the French state, which organizes
the competitions for the coveted title of “Meilleur Ouvrier
de France,” which could be translated as “top artisan
of France.” These difficult ordeals cover every trade from
cabinet- to cheese- and chocolate-making, and the anointed wear
their badges proudly, as well they might. But because the emphasis
is on reproducing traditional methods, says Fourneau, the competition
goes a long way to stifle innovation and imagination and discourage
the mavericks who might produce breakthroughs. As a result, France
is in danger of trailing behind the gastronomic vanguard, which
no longer holds the French tradition in such awe.
But what
about those wonderful French products, you say? A public relations
myth, in many cases, according to Fourneau, especially in a country
that officially endorses the mass production and processing of
food under the auspices of the European Union’s Common Agricultural
Policy, which, along with the leading chefs’ money-spinning
gambit of putting their names on ready-to-eat meals sold in supermarkets,
is the co-villain of the piece.
Less than
10 percent of the 2 million veal calves raised for the table each
year in France are reared in the traditional manner, and less
than 2 percent of the pigs are bred to high quality standards,
says Fourneau. And even then, in the case of pigs, a single breed
(the large white) predominates, because it fattens quickly. Thanks
to the Common Agricultural Policy, he adds, quoting food-quality
advocate Jean Pierre Coffe, raising veal in indoor pens is up
to 20 times more remunerative than raising them on their mother’s
milk in the time-honored manner.
Or take that
expression so beloved of the French, le terroir. It would
take a much longer piece than this to peel away its many layers
of meaning, but it pushes the same sort of buttons as “down
home” and “traditional” when applied to food.
If you like living dangerously, ask a French butcher the name
of the person who raised the beef you are about to eat, and what
breed it was. You can ask those questions and get (fairly) honest
answers to them in most British shops and supermarkets today.
The most you might get from your butcher, after he has thrown
the cleaver at you, is that it is a produit de terroir.
As a self-proclaimed
food critic, I was, of course, interested in what a long-time
professional had to say about the job. How do you become a food
critic? Serendipity. Do you need any special qualifications? No.
How do you get ahead in the business? Here, the answer seems to
be, “Blow your cover, make sure the restaurants know who
you are, and never pay for a meal.” Fourneau, as I said,
managed to preserve his anonymity, despite his 15-year stint at
Elle. And he always paid for his food. I personally have
no difficulty in emulating him, though perhaps not for the same
reasons…
Irritatingly,
Bon Appétit, Messieurs has no index – a
common failing with Gallic publications, which galls les anglo-saxons
no end – so one has to plow through the pages to find
the names of the damned and the saved. Of the restaurant critics,
many are called but few are chosen, which does make for entertaining
reading. One who comes out squeaky clean is François Simon
of Le Figaro, who writes elegantly and entertainingly,
and can occasionally be quite generous in his praise.
For the higher-profile
critic, of course, anonymity is difficult. In the recently published
Heat, a riveting and highly-recommended saga of a non-professional’s
experience in making and serving food professionally, Bill Buford
describes the preparations at a New York restaurant for the visit
of Ruth Reichl, the famed and feared former restaurant critic
of The New York Times. The strategies used, he writes,
“call to mind a coach preparing for a big game.” As
the staff awaited the “anonymous” visit, the entire
restaurant was in “a constant state of dress rehearsal,”
and while there, she “had the most experienced waiter, plus
a back-up waiter, a floor manager and two runners.”
This, Fourneau
says firmly, is not what it is about; he describes a similar experience
on the one occasion when his mask slipped. Anonymity ensures that
the critic’s experience will be similar to that of ordinary
customers, so that there is a decent chance that what you read
is what you get. His bottom line, however, is: never trust a critic.
I second that. Go see, taste and judge for yourself.
Richard
Hesse
Bon
Appétit, Messieurs, by Léo Fourneau.
Paris, Editions Grasset, 260pp. €16.90.
Heat,
by Bill Buford. New York, Alfred A Knopf, 318pp.
$25.95. Published in the UK by Jonathan Cape, £12.99.
©
2007 Paris Update
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