France's Restaurants Face Regulation Over 'House-Made' Food

French Member of Parliament Daniel Fasquelle isn’t above grabbing a bite at McDonald’s when he’s in a hurry. But as the son of a butcher and grandson of a baker, Fasquelle is a purist about the handiwork and meticulously selected ingredients that go into plates of boeuf bourguignon and tarte tatin dished up by French restaurants. So imagine the punch to the gut Fasquelle received on June 12, when the restaurant association Synhorcat revealed a dirty secret: Thirty-one percent of French eateries surveyed in May said they don’t make all their food from scratch.

News that French cooks are buying frozen molten chocolate cake might give a boost to Fasquelle’s plan to revive a failed bill that would restrict the use of the word restaurant only to establishments that make all their own food. The lawmaker from northern France says he got the idea after discovering a website that lists restaurants in the south of France that cook from scratch. “We are supposed to be the land of gastronomy, but someone had to set up a website to find real food,” Fasquelle explains. “I don’t want to be left with a few starred restaurants no one can afford and then everyone else eating the same thing.”