French Gastronomy and the Magic of Americanism by Rick Fantasia (review)

Rather than consider fast food as"a thing-in-itself,"Fantasia, drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, looks at the dynamic between Americanized mass culture and traditional French cultural forms through the prism of profiles of chefs. Fantasia's database consists of biographic dossiers of 37 winners of three Michelin stars during the 1990s, profiles of 244 other chefs featured in the premier journal for the profession, and the resumes of 792 chefs and 640 culinary workers in secondary positions. His point of departure is the 2003 suicide of Bernard Loiseau, a tragedy widely blamed on the Gault-Millaut guide's downgrading of his restaurant, and on rumors that Michelin was about to withdraw one of his three stars. Fantasia examines the gastronomic field from its beginnings, first as an expression of the French literary imagination and then as an institution—the restaurant—while explaining the process by which it gained autonomy from other cultural fields. He scrutinizes the ways gastronomic guides, trade journals,food critics,and other agents create a"production of belief in both the virtuosity of the chef and the value of haute cuisine" (39), positing that the world of gastronomy is less a group of individual actors pursuing their own ends than "a configuration of social (and socialized) actors," both institutional and individual,"through which established reciprocal relationships are mobilized in pursuit of recognition and where advancement is more or less shared among those with whom one shares a common position within the field, as well as a common disposition toward it" (61). Numerous factors (more women in the workforce, urban traffic that discouraged workers from going home for lunch, the journée continue, etc.) contributed to the rise of the fast-food market in the 1970s. Every aspect of this American import—not just the items on the menu but the ways they were produced and the places they were served—was exotic to the French, who had to be convinced to take their food out of the restaurant. Unlike most European countries, France reacted by attempting to fit traditional national foods into the fast-food mold (case in point: viennoiseries such as La Brioche Dorée). Fantasia's incisive analyses of industrial processes and marketing techniques, accompanied by detailed social maps of the gastronomic field, are of particular note. The study culminates in an overview of the ways that haute cuisine has adapted to an evolving gastronomic field, with lively portraits of chefs such as Paul Bocuse, whose contracts with cookware companies and Disney, among many other ventures, constituted "trad[ing] his stock of symbolic capital with the industrial firms" (176); Alain Ducasse, whose Chef of the Year award was underwritten by five industrial food companies; and Joël Robuchon, who, after shuttering his three-star restaurant, opened several bars/bistros with the specific aim of blurring the lines between haute cuisine and pub food. Thoroughly documented and expertly written, Fantasia's book demystifies the "magical" hold that American business practices have had on a France torn between its traditions and its desire to modernize.