Quick, quick slow and the lure of malbouffery

I confess to eating more fast food in France than I ever ate in England, and attempt to make up for it with a recipe for slow-cooked lamb shanks.

My perfect French life… And below, my secret French life, in those first few months.

In popular imagination, France still exists as a slow food nation: on every table a red-and-white checked cloth, in every pot a daube.

But I have a confession to make and it’s not pretty. I ate more fast food burgers in our first four months of living in France than I ever did when I lived in London.

Sure, sure, I still wheeled my shopping trolley to the market and around the village shops several times a week and cooked from scratch every day. But while we were in the thick of renovating this greedy, needy old house, we spent a lot of time racing between DIY stores, Mr Bricolage, BricoCash, and Bricoman  (it’s like there was some terrible divorce and they had to split all the ducting and timber three ways), and that invariably meant– once again – we failed to master the rhythm of the day. As we ticked off errands, we often found ourselves screaming past the civilised lunch hour of 12.30pm.

One of the great attractions of the chain restaurants that frequently share parking space with DIY shops, supermarkets, and garden centres is that they’re open all day. No one looks at you like a war criminal if you try to order lunch at the disgracefully late hour of 2pm. And this is why – in those early days at least – I ate more at McDonalds than I ever did at home in London. Admittedly, I perhaps graced the golden arches three times in the past decade, but I never thought I’d move here and end up eating junk food (malbouffe, literally bad food) Sometimes life’s what happens when you’re dreaming of other plats.

And I am not alone. A year or so ago, Steve Olson, an American tourist in Provence, tweeted about discovering a restaurant, La Pataterie, where he ordered une pomme de terre cuite au four à la Savoyard. Apparently, he liked it: “I peed a bit when I bit into it. There was a descending choir of angels.” Now while their menu might promise, “Entrer dans un restaurant La Pataterie, c’est découvrir un univers chaleureux dans une ambiance champêtre” (“Walk into La Pataterie, and you’ll discover a welcoming universe with a country atmosphere”), this chain is an ambitious version of that late, great student favourite, Spud-U-Like, where all the steaks and grilled chicken come with some form of potato. Our friend Steve had ordered a baked potato with ham and cheese. His tweet went viral. As you might expect, Steve came in for a lot of flak, both online and in an article in the southern newspaper, Midi Libre.

But then something happened. People rallied to the defence of our potato guy, Steve, criticising the snobbery of many who sneered at him. This being France, some of the defences of La Pataterie went a bit Les Mis (A favourite: “These are obviously petty bourgeois tweets based on class contempt.”) Others simply praised the convenience and value for money of these chains, of being able to eat whenever you wanted, with minimum fuss.

There are certainly plenty of them. The motorways are dotted with branches of Courtepaille, Buffalo Grill, Flunch and yes, La Pataterie. Our local HyperU supermarket has a branch of the Hippopotamus chain in its entrance, which I always think is a punchy name for a fast food restaurant – is it a warning, or an invitation to wallow in their mousse au chocolat? 

And of course, there’s McDonalds. France is the chain’s most profitable country outside the USA. Customers spend more per head here than anywhere else, they come in larger groups and often have dessert too, with 70 per cent of customers choosing to eat in rather than take away. Have a treat. Make a day of it.

When you ask French people about the popularity of McDonalds, no one mentions the burgers. They will look you directly in the face and explain they love it for the free WiFi, just like those who used to say they bought Playboy for the fiction. But it’s true there is also a sort of egalitarianism about chains which is gently appealing. You know exactly what you're going to get, no surprises.

As if to assuage feelings of malbouffounery, many of these places go big on provenance. They want you to feel like you know where the cow came from, practically down to the field. At Buffalo Grill, despite the bull’s horns on the roof, ersatz wild west saloon interior and softly piped country and western music, the menu is bedecked with the red, white and blue of the French tricolour. The corn on the cob is proudly served with sel de Guérande and the steak haché of the burgers proclaims itself façon bouchère. Even the big international chains have specials in France which you never see at home. On a recent DIY outing, we stopped at Burger King where I ordered a Cantal cheeseburger with rocket. It was as good as any burger I ever ordered from a waiter with a man bun and full sleeves of tattoos at an East London pop up, and about a third of the price.

Of course, France now has its own fashionable independent burger restaurants too, much like the ones that sprung up in my corner of London over the past decade or so. And like them, they have a tendency to faff about, to create towering burgers with too much meat, too much cheese, special sauces of intense individuality, extra bacon, added pickles, so much presence you feel they might require their own postcode. And here, in true vive la France fashion, as if directed by the Académie Française itself, these burgers with notions are sometimes served not in a nice, soft bun, but in a baguette, thus rendering them impossible to eat without instant access to a dry cleaners, possibly a dentist.

When McDonalds was launched in France in 1972, sceptics expressed doubts about its potential for success as they believed it would have a hard time convincing French people to eat with their hands. Over 1400 branches later, McDonalds seems to be doing fine. But one thing that I appreciate about my new-found burger habit is that here – unlike in London – it is perfectly acceptable to eat your burger with a knife and fork. No one stares. No one sneers. No one deducts cool points. Personally, forget the house of dreams, I think this alone is reason enough to emigrate.

Lamb shank with courgettes and squash

This is loosely inspired by some of my favourite Moroccan tagine flavours, and largely inspired by what I had to hand at home. I don’t cook it in a tagine – the name of the dish comes from the cooking pot – but rather in my trusted Le Creuset. But you get the idea.

It makes quite a lot, so enough for four hungry people, though if you shred the cooked lamb from the bones once it’s tender and stir it back into the sauce, you will probably have enough for eight.