It’s all kicking off in the fields of Northern France. In an area that’s become known as La Vallée de la Frite, or Chip Valley, multinational companies are buying up swathes of land, ripping up hedgerows and ploughing over meadows to make larger fields to grow enough potatoes to feed the country’s seemingly insatiable appetite for – wait for it – chips.
Canadian giant, McCain, currently produces 800 tonnes of oven chips a day from its plant in Pas-de-Calais, with expansion plans that include a production line which will stretch for 1.4 kilometres. The French frozen chip market rose by 25 per cent between 2019 and 2023, and while French people eat 19kg fresh potatoes each a year, they consume 32kg of processed potatoes in the form of oven chips, ready-made mash, gratins and snacks.
In the United Kingdom – perhaps nurtured by idyllic summer holidays past, long-ago French exchanges, and sunny, greedy travel programmes – it’s not surprising we sometimes have a romantic notion of how the French eat. This is often seasoned with a generous sprinkling of our own gastronomic inferiority complex, as we imagine the French enjoying long, elegant lunches while we inhale limp meal deals at our desks, or feasting on multi-course dinners while we eat our ready meals from trays in front of the telly.
While it’s true that most French people remain proud of their culinary traditions and culture, France is also a modern country where people are busy, most women work outside of the home, and no one has time to cook pot au feu from scratch on a Tuesday.
In many French kitchens, granny’s wobbly old friteuse (deep fryer) has been replaced by an air fryer. More than a quarter of French households own them, and on the newsagents’ shelves, there are magazines dedicated to their use, extolling their speed, ease of use and potential health benefits.
This year, Picard – the French version of Iceland – celebrates its fiftieth anniversary as the country’s favourite source of frozen food. Just like Iceland, Picard has freezers full of fish fingers, chicken nuggets and pizza, and of course, all manner of chips. There are microwave chips, organic ones, thin ones, fat ones and ones with their skins on. There are chips cooked in duck fat, others cooked in rosemary and olive oil, and potato wedges with lemon and thyme. But this being France, it’s not all nuggets and chips. Bags of fancy mushrooms, such as cèpes, girolles and morilles, share freezer space with veal stock. In the next aisle, there’s crème de Barry à la truffe blanche d’été (cream of cauliflower soup with white summer truffle) and guinea fowl stuffed with foie gras.
In the past three years since I moved to the South of France, I’ve learned that a lot of great French eating is great shopping. While being a skilled cook is admired, so is knowing where to buy great bread, the best cheese, the freshest patisserie. If your puff pastry comes from the chest freezer in Picard, well done you – who doesn’t have better things to do than to make their own? Far from being elaborate, many meals at home are simple, often assemblies of well-chosen ingredients and dishes from local shops, a weekly market and yes, of course, the supermarket.
My observation is that French people don’t care much for breakfast. Many adults skip it altogether, or simply have a yoghurt, some fruit, or toast or baguette with a little jam or honey. Children often have Nutella on bread or cereal. Croissants and pains au chocolat are usually saved for weekend treats. People don’t seem to get as wound up about sugar in their food as we do, perhaps because they know it will all balance out with more substantial things later in the day (though for children’s after school goûter (or snack), a piece of baguette sandwiched around a lump of chocolate remains a popular choice).
The idea that persists in popular imagination of French people enjoying a two-hour lunch is still a reality for some. Many go to restaurants or cafés for three cheerful courses, plus a splash of wine, although just as many eat much more simply and quickly now. The idea, however, of sitting at your desk eating a sandwich while scrolling on your phone or catching up on work emails is a piteous one to most French people. Either you take a proper break on your own to regain your equilibrium (they’re big on equilibrium) or you enjoy a sociable lunch with friends or colleagues.
While what people eat evolves, the idea that eating together creates and reinforces a sense of community remains a very powerful one, and it appears you can’t start too young. One of the things I most enjoy about going out to Sunday lunch in our village on the water is seeing large multi-generational family groups sitting down together, with the older children helping the very smallest ones tackle their oysters and moules frites.
This sense of food being an essential component of community is reinforced at school, where meals are eaten together in courses, in a proper dining room. I take a look at our village primary school’s menu for today and see it’s cucumber and lamb’s lettuce with vinaigrette, pollock with thyme and lemon, pasta, and green beans with butter and garlic, gouda then crèpes. Tomorrow, all the little Alices and Gabriels will enjoy beetroot vinaigrette, chicken escalope with wheat pilaf and petits pois, then Coulommier cheese and fruit.
For many, lunch remains the most important meal of the day and supper is a simpler affair. For older generations, dinner at home would be soup, a green salad and cheese, always with bread, perhaps some fruit or yoghurt, and while this is perhaps not so widespread as it once was, dinner is usually something that is quick to prepare or assemble.
But times change. While it’s still rare to see people eating in the street, other than the odd ice cream cone or crèpe, le fast food is ubiquitous. France is McDonald’s second largest market outside the USA and even small towns now have places to buy pizza, kebabs, tacos or cheap noodles. I stayed in an Airbnb in Marseille last week and at the top of the (French) owner’s list of recommended restaurants wasn’t somewhere to enjoy bouillabaisse, but their favourite place for smash burgers.
Some things, however, remain the same. Snacking is definitely seen as a character flaw; a sign of weakness. While chips may be increasingly popular, as the visiting teenage son of an English friend discovered last summer, even in a seaside resort people will look upon you with a mixture of puzzlement bordering on horror if you try to order them on their own. They are, and it seems will remain, always the accompaniment, never the main event.
Debora Robertson writes a weekly newsletter of recipes and stories from a French village deborarobertson.substack.com
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