November 12, 2009--The Mona Lisa & Le Big Tasty

At least a few things are getting better. For example, the food at the Louvre.

To tell you the truth, after a morning of wandering through the galleries and spending transporting time gazing at the Winged Victory and the Venus de Milo and then Vermeer’s Lacemaker, Rembrandt’s Supper at Emmaus, and of course Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, I have never been that happy with the food served at the various eating places in the Museo. Fancy stuff such as a haricot verts salade at the trendy Café Marly. Reportedly a Karl Lagerfeld favorite.

Not that I have anything against escargots or paté or croque monsieurs, but I prefer them in a café along Boulevard St Germain, not in the basement of the Louvre.

I am thus happy to refer you to the attached article from the New York Times that reports about plans to open a McDonald’s in the Carrousel du Louvre, in the food and shopping court under the steel and glass entrance of architect’s I.M. Pei’s incongruous Pyramide du Louvre.

After museuming and then shopping in Le Carrousel at Lalique, Esprit, Sephora, or the Virgin Megastore, neighboring shops of the forthcoming McDo, and, how could I forget, checking up on your rental car reservation at the convenient Hertz counter, also conveniently located there, you will be able to plop your weary body into an iconic mac-DOUGH orange plastic chair and order up some of those delicious fries to accompany your Big Mac.

Or if you prefer your beef patty Gallic style, you will be able to have it with whole-grain mustard sauce rather U.S. of A. style, drowning in a mix of ketchup and mayo. It does, though, come with the essential shredded lettuce, pickles, and onions. Unless you ask them to hold them.

Le Big Tasty, as it is called, is among the most popular of McDo’s offerings. And they are widely available in France as there are now 1,140 McDonald’s across La Belle France. Yes, 1,140. Micky D’s there is second only to McDonald’s in America when it comes to profitability. No wonder hardly anyone is protesting this latest American incursion. The subheadline of the Times story says it all--“A Move to the Louvre Draws Little Notice.”

I remember a time not too long ago when Le Drugstore opened on the Champs Élysées amid howls of protest. Not only was this viewed widely as encroachment by a barbarian culture, but also further evidence that the French language was being, forgive the word, bastardized. Pretty soon, many moaned, young Frenchmen will be speaking Franglais—a hideous mix of French and English. Hearing Je vais driver downtown pour le weekend drove traditionalists crazy.

But that sort of chauvinistic outrage lives on now only in the stuffy minds of the most conservative. The rest appear quite happy with their goût de l’Amérique—with their taste of America.

In fact, the McDonald’s invasion has also, no surprise, provided food for thought for French intellectuals. For example, Alain Drouard, a historian who is president of the International Commission into European Food History (a job I would kill to have) is quoted as saying, “Gastronomy is a discourse; it is about collective belief.”

And all along I thought food was about eating.