Fine Dining Under Threat
Increasingly foreign visitors and locals in france are complaining about a drop in the standards of cuisine chefs say many restaurants cut corners by using factory made or processed ingredients david shazan reports a french institution lunch at the local restaurant the chef here is officially recognized as a master restaurateur he
Uses only fresh ingredients but he’s in the minority an increasing number of restaurants are using factory-made ingredients like these we got the owners of this restaurant to demonstrate them although they’re not used here this is a cheap alternative to eggs pre-cooked industrial egg roll already cut into slices ready for salads or
Other dishes and here’s instant sauce base just add water and you get a white sauce or a rubler essential for many french dishes this is ready-made pepper sauce just heat it up and pour over a steak and there you are some restaurants now they just don’t want to employ cooks because it’s too
Expensive and they prefer to buy like ready frozen meals instead to get bigger profit margin how widespread is this practice of using factory-made ingredients well investigations have shown that most of the restaurants now are using this kind of ingredients to make more money and make the job of the cook easier
Unlike this restaurant which uses fresh herbs and spices and cooks everything from scratch a lot of expensive establishments do resort to industrial ingredients it’s not just the cheap ones this is a bottle of truffle flavoring now anything billed as truffle flavoured tends to be expensive but this only costs a couple of euros
And it contains sugar alcohol various chemicals one thing it does not contain is truffle this restaurant upholds traditional standards but french food critics are increasingly concerned that the nation’s culinary creativity is being sacrificed to the pursuit of profit david shazam bbc news paris
1 Comment
This saddens me.