Forbidden! Illicit! Subversive, Even!
I’m not sure what’s going on in France. First, it was CW and line dancing. Now, this.
EVEN if you couldn’t be on the Champs-Élysées for Bastille Day on Monday to watch seven parachutists float down in front of President Nicolas Sarkozy, you can still celebrate the greatness of France with a new local tradition.
Eat a hamburger.
Beginning a few years ago but picking up momentum in the past nine months, hamburgers and cheeseburgers have invaded the city. Anywhere tourists are likely to go this summer — in St.-Germain cafes, in fashion-world hangouts, even in restaurants run by three-star chefs — they are likely to find a juicy beef patty, almost invariably on a sesame seed bun.
“It has the taste of the forbidden, the illicit — the subversive, even,†said Hélène Samuel, a restaurant consultant here. “Eating with your hands, it’s pure regression. Naturally, everyone wants it.â€
It is a startling turnaround in a country where a chef once sued McDonald’s for $2.7 million in damages over a poster that suggested he was dreaming of a Big Mac. Hamburgers were everything that French dining is not: informal, messy, fast and foreign.
Of course, they are French, so some are plopping foie gras on it. But others, not.
And while steak tartare shows up on practically every brasserie menu, chefs now recognize that a hamburger is not simply six ounces of chopped lean beef grilled until crusty.
“No, that would be an error,†said Ms. Grasser-Hermé.
“A hamburger is the architecture of taste par excellence,†she explained. “The meat needs to be a mix of fatty and lean. Not raw, not rare. It must be medium rare. At the same time the bread needs to be smooth, tepid, toasted on the sesame side. I like to brush the soft side with butter. There needs to be a crispy chiffonade of iceberg lettuce. Everything plays a role.â€
In developing the Salle Pleyel burger, Ms. Samuel and Ms. Ezgulian felt the weight of tradition. “We’re a little terrified of making a mistake,†said Ms. Samuel. “We cling to things like the soft buns, sweet-and-sour pickles, onions, tomatoes, cheese. We need these guideposts because we don’t have the history, the context. Otherwise, for us, it’s not a burger. It’s a hot sandwich.â€
This doesn’t surprise me:
Also, he explained, Parisians don’t really understand about drinking a milkshake with the burger. They order it as dessert.
No, the fried apple pie is the dessert. Wait, nix that. MickeyD’s dropped that from the menu when Ray Croc died and his idiot wife took over.
Patrick Joubert Conlon:
A “chiffonade of iceberg lettuce?” LOL! I wonder if they serve real ketchup with the pommes frites.
July 16, 2008, 9:51 pmFlanders Fields:
Belgians will quickly point out that mayonnaise is the preferred accompaniament for frietjes. There is no such thing as “French fries”! When anyone in Europe learns to make a real hamburger, please let me know!
July 17, 2008, 11:00 am