Say It Ain't So, Jacques!
 

Restaurants in France are using industrial food from massive factories instead of cooking themselves. Yes, the mecca for fine food is using reheated from frozen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/bu...=business&_r=0

WHAT????? Is nothing sacred anymore:??

Nothing new, just newly exposed.

Guess you need to find the mom&pop kitchen exposed place to watch what goes on (and not behind closed doors)!!!

In Italy, there is a law that menu items that are frozen, or that might be frozen in some circumstances, must be indicated. Usually there's an asterisk, and a footnote, something like, "In the absence of fresh fish, this plate may be made with frozen fish."

The French have, for many years propagated the myth that their food in all respects, is superior to anyone else's. However, they are capable of churning out as much rubbish as any other cuisine and the top end of the food offering isn't that different from what you'll find in many other country's best restaurants.....IMHO!

Paris has its fair share of bad food, as has the South. Not everywhere produces great Bouillabaisse, indeed few do.

This is such an old rehash and concerns the entire world, not just France. The question is what you do with the frozen items -- just heat them up or do something interesting with them? Frozen vegetables and frozen seafood have been proven to be as good as the fresh items -- and of course they cause far less food poisoning than "fresh" items.

I was shopping in Picard once and the person ahead of me in line, dressed in a white kitchen jacket and long apron, was buying a very large box full of items, on account.

I would have thought there would be regular suppliers who made deliveries rather than someone from the dining establishment running to the store like that.

Frozen raw ingredients that are used in a dish may be one thing, but this seems to concern the conversion of restaurants into thaw, heat, and serve emporiums that buy the finished product fully made, and where there is no cooking in the usual sense. Few restaurants make their own desserts or breads, but you expect that someone in the back to be turning raw ingredients into a meal.

We have chains of restaurants here in the US that run similarly, heating or "finishing" prefab meals. The story may be apochryphal about the diner at a low end chain restaurant being told, when ordering a steak, "We are out of rare. Would you like medium or well done?" I would hate to think that I would unintentionally be in a French restaurant that is no more than an expensive distributor of industrialized frozen "meals almost ready to eat."

The thing is, just about every place does "something" to the prepared items. Sometimes they just sprinkle parsley on top, sometimes they mix in their own sauces, sometimes half of the items that they add are completely new. At what point does a prepared item become a homemade item? That's the question that I don't think will ever be really answered.

I am not a fan of pizza, but every now and then I will buy a frozen pizza (maybe once every 4 months). It is inconceivable for me to eat that horrible thing as it is sold, so I always add chopped onions, olives and other vegetables, new spices, my own extra cheese, perhaps some slices of chorizo, etc. So am I eating a frozen pizza or a homemade pizza?

I am flashing back to the movie National Lampoon's European Vacation where they are heating up trays of frozen TV dinners in the back of a Parisian bistro and and then putting the food on a plate and adding a sprig of parsley before serving to diners.

And those waiters with a nifty device to uncork a bottle, refill it with something less expensive and deftly insert the cork again - rumor or fact? To unsuspecting tourists with little or no palette!

Many Italians will swear that it's impossible to get a decent meal in France.

Frozen foods are just as nutritious as fresh foods, but many foods lose their texture when frozen, or change their taste. Frozen mushrooms for example, and frozen green beans, are easy to detect. Frozen peas, on the other hand, are better than fresh peas that were picked two days ago, because the sugar in peas rapidly turns to starch, and freezing stops the process.

Most meats freeze pretty well, but fish generally doesn't. I prepared sole for dinner tonight, six little fresh ones direct from the Adriatic, for the two of us. I do occasionally buy frozen fish, but the heavenly taste of these sole could not have come from the freezer.

One of the reasons, I'm sure, that restaurants serve frozen dishes is that people have no idea of when certain things are in season. If you order artichokes in July, or porcini mushrooms in May, you can't insist that they be fresh.

frozen truffles from China?

You usually can taste beef that has been frozen. You can easily tell when vegetables have been frozen.

And in any case, none of that will change in French restaurants because their dishes will still be homemade or not (80% not) whatever ingredients they use.

Is that 80% a verified figure? I may have to stick with charcouterie or steak frites next trip. (Yes, yes, I know, the frites were frozen, too.)

The "80%" figure is about restaurants that admit to using "some" industrial products. That can vary from a very small number of items to the complete menu.

Isn't it ironic that the word "manufacture" stems from the words for "made by hand." The low price of manufactured foods lets non-cooking restaurants drive out the hand made ones.

And, while I don't necessarily want to promote restaurants that use the easiest methods, it is also obvious that standards of hygiene are much more strictly controlled for the "industrial" products than the homemade ones. It does bear mentioning if only because so many people are worried about eating something that will poison them.

Maybe I should just get an apartment with a microwave, visit Picard and do my own restaurant.

Well, you would certainly eat well. I think in the "brand name" surveys in France, Picard comes out in the top ten. (But if you really want to know, Google is #1, Danone is #2 and Michelin is #3.

Much ado about nothing - France has great restaurants no matter how you look at it. If you did not know it you would not realize it and meals would cost even more than they do!

At least the cheese plate can't be of frozen goods?

Most people I know say the food in France is crap. You can find better food in London.

I'll never forget a "real English breakfast" I had in Basingstoke. Stuck a knife in the sausage ---grease squirted every which way.

Why do I never hear of gourmet English restaurants?

Why do I never hear of gourmet English restaurants?>

They're called chippies - Fish and Chips about as gourmet as it gets in the UK!

Nonsense!

One sausage in the foodie mecca of Basingstoke was greasy, therefore all British food is bad? Fish & Chips are as good as it gets?

Have a look at the Michelin guide and if you're in the UK ask locals for good restaurants. I once had a tough steak in Nevada--US food is cr*p.

Pal should keep off the Dulux cocktails (shaken not stirred).

Even French bread is subject to falling standards it seems - my French friends came here and said that the bread they got at Panera Bread was better than the bread in many French boulangeries!

Panera bread is wonderful. I keeps for weeks in the fridge without getting stale or moldy. Better living through chemistry.

Actually I think Panera bread prides themselves on not using chemicals? The old St Louis Bread company, as it used to be called, may have but I think I read now that the company has gone green - yeh the slimy green mold after weeks!