Paul from Paris

I’ve not yet met Gordon Ramsay. I haven’t read any of his books or eaten in any of his restaurants. But I have seen a few episodes of his television series, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. The series makes good points and raises good questions about consulting and teaching.

Gordon Ramsay is a fine European: a British chef who served in the kitchens of top French chefs before taking the helm of restaurants in Britain (and beyond). Ramsay seems to accumulate Michelin stars and accolades all the time. In addition to presiding over kitchens, Ramsay produces books and television programs.

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares specializes in deathbed conversions. A restaurant is ailing. Ramsay arrives for an intensive, one-week shape-up. Changes are made. At the end of the week, a stress test is carried out, for example when a restaurant critic visits. A few months later, Ramsay returns for a check-up visit. If all is well, the restaurant is still in business.

Why do I admire Ramsay as a teacher and consultant? He really cares about what he does. And he cares enough about his clients not to over-emphasize technique or content. He instead stresses method, process, or experiential knowledge. From what I’ve seen on Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmare, Remsay insists on:

• motivation, boosting the motivation of the whole restaurant staff, while testing their willingness to change and grow;
• quality, especially fresh ingredients, locally sourced (which leads to mindful behavior in the kitchen);
• marketing, by offering memorable dining, without pretension.

Gordon Ramsay also displays a mercurial temper. He swears like a sailor. He threatens to abandon his mission and suggests that his client throw in the towel.

I wish I had the courage to take a cue from Ramsay. His theatrical temperament accomplishes two things:

• Ramsay conveys artistic authority; and
• he tests his client’s motivation and willingness to change.

If the client doesn’t believe that it needs to change or questions whether it has anything to learn from Ramsay, then Ramsay’s mission would be compromised. If the client wanted only to watch Ramsay in action, without questioning and changing its own behavior, then Ramsay’s work would not yield results.

Ramsay doesn’t use theatrics to instill a personality cult. He acts in the client’s interest. The proof of this is the stress test, where Gordon puts to the test, by neutral third parties, the restaurant and his work with it over the week.

Activia yogurt

Danone (known in the USA as Dannon) makes high-quality yogurts. It’s a big company that plays by the rules.

I was surprised to read, buried in a press release on a promising first quarter, that Danone had withdrawn requests pending before a European authority to make health claims about two of its dairy products.

EFSA is the European Food Safety Authority. EFSA “was set up in January 2002, following a series of food crises in the late 1990s” as an impartial, pan-EU regulatory agency. One of EFSA’s missions is to review nutrition and health claims.

Danone is committed to “nutriceuticals” or “probiotics” and has a history of making claims about health, or that suggest healthiness:

Bio brand yogurt

• A line of dairy products was long named “Bio”. In French, “bio” is shorthand for “organic”. Danone’s product was not organic. The producer said the name was derived from “bios”, Greek for “life”. But why wasn’t the name then “bios”, and why was the product name was displayed on a green background?
• Danone subsequently chose a new name for the Bio line: “Activia”. In the name, there’s “via”, “life”. Much of the product advertising has centered around “feeling better” and improved digestion.
• Danone also introduced “Actimel”, a drinkable fermented milk product. Actimel is compared to a “fortifier” in French product advertising.

Actimel product

Danone has withdrawn its applications to make health claims about Activia and Actimel before the EFSA because, the company says, the regulator’s criteria are “unclear”.

I’m torn: I’d prefer straightfoward health claims to veiled allusions (which is how I’ve understood Danone’s past product advertising), but I’d want a European regulator to apply strict rules on health claims (such as vegetable sterols that help manage cholesterol). I’m not sure whether or how the two aims can be reconciled.

The French titre-restaurant turns 40 this year.

Like hallway lights on a timer or doorknobs that aren’t round, French people seem to take titres-restaurant as a matter of course; but they puzzle outsiders.

The titre-restaurant sprang from paternalistic reflexes. French law required employers to provide for meal arrangements for their employees. In the case of factory workers, this usually meant a canteen. Many factories and offices had canteens, but others did not. The titre-restaurant was meant to fill this cap.

The principle is simple: an employer issues an employee a titre-restaurant (I’ll call it a lunch voucher), which the employee uses to buy lunch. Restaurants and cafés and vendors accept a lunch voucher, which they redeem from a voucher issuer.

The lunch voucher system offers incentives to employers in the form of tax breaks, and to employees through a discount system, where an employee pays about 50% of the voucher’s face value.

This being France, the actual scheme is complicated, as illustrated by this charming diagram (which I’d like to call “Vouchers make the world go round”) from the national lunch voucher commission (French acronym: CNTR, here pictured as the equal of the French state):

The fortieth anniversary of the lunch voucher is more solemn than celebratory. New rules came into effect on 1 March to regulate lunch voucher use. Most of the new rules are intended to discipline an overly lax or relaxed use of the vouchers. Among the changes:

• Lunch vouchers are to be used for lunch only, not for dinner or on the weekend.
• An employee may use a lunch voucher only in the area where he works. Employees who travel are supposed to have special lunch vouchers.
• An employee is supposed to use only one lunch voucher at a time. A past tolerance for using two vouchers may be on the decline.
• An employee may now use a lunch voucher to buy fresh fruits and vegetables.
• Supermarkets and hypermarkets have reined in lunch voucher use. Henceforth, they will accept a lunch voucher only for salads (with lettuce or fruit), sandwiches, or prepared dishes (fresh, frozen, canned, or vacuum-packed); special bar codes will help police the system.

I confess to having used multiple vouchers for a weekend dinner (at which wine was served) far from home, during what was apparently an anything-goes high time for lunch vouchers. I’m not eligible for lunch vouchers today; given the glorious proliferation of rules around their use, I hardly miss this privilege.

Steeped in cynicism, Old World merchants craftily defrauded a family-owned New World business. Alerted by the odor of turpitude, investigators exposed the foul play and brought those responsible to justice.

This dramatic story happens to be true.

From 2008 to 2008, a group of cooperatives in the Languedoc-Roussillon region (in the south of France, the westernmost territory that faces the Mediterranean) sold wine to Ducasse, an intermediary working for Aimery Sieur d’Arques, a large French wine conglomerate. This French group then sold the wine to a family-owed business based in the United States, E&J Gallo Winery, which sold it under the Red Bicyclette label.

Gallo and its customers were enchanted with the “warmth and charm” of wine from the “sun-drenched” Languedoc-Roussillon. Indeed, the Languedoc-Roussillon region calls itself the “world’s biggest vineyard”.

The problem: the French producers claimed the wine was pinot noir. As investigators found, it was not; the wine was actually merlot or syrah (shiraz).

The fraud was perpetrated over 135,000 hectoliters of wine. That’s more than 3 1/2 million US gallons. Put differently, that’s enough wine to fill 18 million bottles.

That’s a lot of wine. Especially when the Languedoc-Roussillon region produces, in total, 50,000 hectoliters of pinot noir annually.

Carcassonne court

Money provided both a motivation and an important clue for investigators. The wine passed off as pinot noir sold for €58 per hectoliter. That’s more than the €45 local varietals command. But it’s significantly discounted from the lofty €97 price that genuine pinot noir commands.

The Carcassonne court imposed fines up to €180,000, and a six-month jail term (suspended) for a ringleader.

French dairy farmers are upset. They’ve gone on strike to seek higher milk prices.

This being France, there’s not a number in sight. What price do dairy farmers receive for a liter of milk? How has that price changed over time? How does that price compare among other European countries, or with milk producers outside Europe? The data certainly exists, but it’s not discussed in public debate.

Political theater, on the other hand, is often discussed. Striking dairy farmers have a dilemma: what to do with the milk that the cows produce? Some farmers just dump production. Others use milk to irrigate fields.

The Peasant Confederation (Confédération paysanne) had another idea: distribute “the milk of peasants’ wrath” (as their flyer puts it) to Parisians, for free.

The distribution was held today, at noon, at the place de la République. I stopped by. Here’s what I saw:

• A milk truck, with 22,000 liters (5,811 US gallons) of milk;
• A handful of Peasant Confederation people, looking more Parisian than peasant, and sporting t-shirts that read “another world is possible … let’s make it so”;
• A few hundred people eager for milk, pushing and shoving to reach the distribution point;
• No more than 4 police officers;
• At least a hundred media representatives: journalists, photographs, sound recorders, videographers, assorted technical people, also pushing and shoving.
• A political poster, with the slogan “we’re not going to let ourselves be milked any more”, that depicted a globe with teats, being milked by a dairy farmer on a stool, who in turn was being milked by a guy in a suit sitting in a swivel chair, who himself was sitting atop another world, with the likeness of George Washington –from the one dollar bill– at its center.

I didn’t hang around to get free milk. I was put off by the pushing and shoving and overall feeling of pandemonium. And I was put off by Peasant Confederation admonitions: “you must keep the milk chilled, boil it, and consume it within 48 hours.” These instructions show perfectly the tension between the natural goodness of farm-fresh milk and the possible dangers of unpasteurized milk.