Les vrais états généraux de la restauration

On rue89 Xavier Denamur brings up some ideas to reunite restaurant owners with an increasingly disillusioned clientele. Seeing the lack of guarantees as to food quality as being the central issue Denamur tackled the widespread abuse of the term fait maison, which generally indicates a dish made entirely by the restaurant to their own recipe.

Until fairly recently it was taken for granted by the French public that their restaurateurs were possessed of real talents. Unfortunately numerous reports have shattered any such illusions, restaurant kitchens now being perceived as little more than assembly lines reheating entire dishes. Legislating the use of the term and, along the same lines governing the use of the term boulangerie, the introduction of a new title, that of artisan restaurateur, would clearly indicate when a meal has been entirely prepared from scratch on the premises. The move comes to restore confidence in the restaurant kitchen as a place of craftsmanship and skill.

Specialising in what they call ‘catering solutions’ industrial manufacturers claim tens of thousands of customers. An estimated 70-80% of French restaurants offer a menu at least partially composed of industrial mass-produced fare and the result is less than apetising. These restaurants are little more than specialists in reheating and serving ready made meals, everything from ingredients to entire dishes delivered tinned, frozen or vacuum-packed.

The use of the unregulated « home-made » terminology on menus does not realistically reflect customer expectations: A dish flaunted as being home-made can be entirely composed of industrial products, or not even prepared in the restaurant itself, the components only being assembled on the premises.

Denamur takes for his example the humble, supposedly home-made, apricot tart. This can be thrown together using a precooked preshaped pastry shell, a factory produced cream purchased in bulk and tinned apricot halves in syrup. In the same vein a tinned stew can be called home-made because a slice of lard has been added to the pot.

The main problem is that there is nothing obliging a restaurateur to indicate where industrial confection is used on the menu.

The proposition for product transparency à la carte is simple. Explicity marking when a dish comes from a factory or is cooked on the premises from fresh and raw produce will restore consumer faith in the nation’s restaurants, rejuvenating the industry’s standing and ultimately create employment.

The only opposition to the argument for transparency comes from those who benefit from keeping consumers in the dark. These large industrial manufacturers take blatant advantage of their customers, cheating them by exploiting the idea that in restaurants are real chefs and craftsmen. These catering solution specialists generate unmeasurable harm to the restaurateurs who put in all the hard work demanded of their craft and have learned that craft through decades of experience.

The truth is that French restauration today suffers more than it benefits from this opacity. Shifting general attitudes within the trade in favour of transparency could be a real boost for small and medium independent restaurants. If there are still no serious efforts to engage with such a principle, when the new contrat de l’avenir is signed on the 28th of April 2011, the independent restaurateur will be further vilified by the media and abandoned by yet more of their customers.

The use of these catering solutions prepared elsewhere than the restaurant kitchen, while not illegal, is comprehensively fraudulent. Given the option there is a marked majority of consumers who would prefer the food they eat to be prepared on the premises. The omission of a meal’s origin is completely duplicitous and plays on a reasonable expectation the consumer has of a certain level of quality.

Not only can they be made in a factory and reheated in a microwave, they’re not even cheaper. Along the same lines as other recently released investigations (les pieds dans le plat Canal+ and Restaurants: Microwave Gastronomy on France2) the latest report on the industry, published April 2011 by Capital Magazine, showed yet again that factory ready-made meals are not sold cheaper than dishes cooked with care and skill.

An agreement to identify the nature of ingredients used as well as the location where a dish has been cooked seems only natural for a country boasting the love the French profess to when it comes to their food. Working with fresh raw produce is craftsmanship all of its own and should be valued as such.

Protecting the use fait maison can been done simply without misleading customers or complicating anyone’s life. The use of the term should be reserved uniquely for those who prepare and cook their food on the premises from fresh raw produce in the same spirit as the legislation that was established for bakeries. A logo to indicate an artisan restaurateur could be placed in the window or on the menu to distinguish between real restaurants from microwave chefs. Whether the difference can be tasted consumers are entitled to know what they are being served on a plate.

Given the increasing importance of additives in our daily food establishments not eligible for the artisan restaurateur title should ask their suppliers for detailed information on their produce. This information could then be made available on request and indicate the complete composition of any dish in the same way a supermarket does.

Such a legislation would restore fair competition in an industry where opacity is the rule and Denamur calls for increased powers to be granted to the Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and Fraud (DGRCCF) to implement and enforce the strategy.

It is difficult to imagine that millions of customers in our nation’s restaurants would ever be opposed to such a simple and obvious measure, yet in his closing lines Denamur wonders at the reluctance of current political representatives to legislate on the issue.

Xavier Denamur gives some solutions in two videos:

http://www.monquotidienautrement.com/temps-libre/xavier-denamur-cultive-son-jardin

http://www.france5.fr/c-notre-affaire/?page=player&id_rubrique=251 his interview starts at 19 minutes 42 secondes

A.H.

Alors que l’on peut connaître avec l’étiquette de contexture obligatoire l’origine et la composition d’un vêtement dans lequel on s’enveloppe, l’opacité sur ce que l’on ingère quand on va au restaurant restera de mise.
Alors qu’ils avaient l’occasion, vendredi 28 avril 2011 dans le cadre de l’avenant au Contrat d’avenir, de redresser le baromètre de l’opinion public en s’engageant sur la transparence, le gouvernement et les organisations patronales de la restauration viennent à nouveau de s’engager à mentir sauf sur les prix comme l’a gentiment fait remarquer l’AFP.
Lisez mes propositions sur ce sujet dans une tribune publiée sur Rue89 , posez des questions avant de vous mettre à table et exigez plus de transparence pour 2012.
Etrangement, c’est en Chine que les restaurateurs seront obligés de pratiquer un peu de transparence comme l’indique un article d’Aujourd’hui la Chine publié le 29 avril 2011.