I admit I haven’t eaten at a McDonald’s in the U.S. in years. But when I was in Orlando, my travelmates found out there was a gourmet one – touted as the “most unique in the world,” so off we went.

Walking in, I was immediately a bit blown away by the displays of gourmet foods – from belgian waffles to a Blue Bonnet ice cream stand. It was a little intimidating – the second floor was all about video games and birthday parties, downstairs was a mix of bar tables, leopard-print chairs, aquariums with live fish, and arcade games. It seemed to have an identity crisis.

I was nervous about what ingredients were being used – after all, it is a McDonald’s – and having so many more choices (there were 34 value meals) made it even more confusing.

I figured a simple pasta with marinara couldn’t be that bad, especially since the pasta would be apparently cooked fresh at the pasta station.

Like a family chain restaurant, I was given one of those little buzzers to let me know when my food was ready. This was definitely no normal McDonald’s, so I was getting my hopes high for an actual bistro-like meal.

My meal came – and admittedly, the pasta with buttered toast looked pretty decent. I got a milkshake, which was fantastic – real ice cream. But the pasta? It was simply a frozen one reheated on the stove. At least, it was heated as I watched. I almost paid $12 at McDonald’s…and I am pretty sure I could buy a frozen dinner entree for a lot less (though I wouldn’t).

The dishes looked better than a normal fast food meal. But the cost was much higher as well – my travelmate paid $17 for this lunch.

All agreed that it looked fancy, but there was something undeniably “McDonald’s” about the taste. Could it be that addictive flavors of fast food that Mark Bittman talked about?

Acknowledge McDonald’s efforts at a “bistro” menu, but despite the packaging, the flavor, price, and ingredients all made it rather hard to swallow.

This girl (we’ll call her Charlotte) and I had been meeting to practice her English a couple of times a week since I began studying at the Université de Bourgogne during the fall of last year. I wasn’t staying with a host family at the time, so Charlotte and I used our time as an exchange. Before learning more about quotidian France through this and several other relationships, I had shamelessly glorified the esteemed French approach to food: the terroir, the restaurants, the feast, and the overall lifestyle. It’s perhaps the world’s dominant gastronomic icon, and a food culture that’s been all but praised by casual tourists, francophiles, and natives alike – so no way that this “love” of McDo can be serious, right?

The entrance to the McDo on the Rue de la Liberté in Dijon, France

After a little research, it became obvious that it – surprisingly – is. In his book The French Challenge: Adopting to Globalization (Brookings Institution, 2001), Philip Gordon states that the total number of fast food and take out businesses in France doubled from 6,500 in 1993 to 13,950 in 1998. Simultaneously, the number of traditional brasseries and cafés dropped from 200,000 in 1960 to 50,000 in 2001. McDo France, specifically, now averages one million customers a day and according to Michael Steinberger in his book Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine, and the End of France (Bloomsbury USA, 2009), annual turnover is growing at twice the rate than it is in the United States. As a result, France became the second-most profitable market in the world after the United States for McDonald’s in 2007. It’s hard to believe that such statistics are possible for a country where the traditional gastronomic culture and cuisine belongs to the UNESCO cultural heritage list.

McDo menu in Dijon displaying option for Charolais beef. Charolais on the dominant breed of cattle in Burgundy and outnumber people in this region!

Curious and always wanting to have the “French” experience, I went. I invited my boyfriend (who’s French and whose eyes grew wide at the invitation) on a date to the central McDo on the Rue de la Liberté in Dijon. Ironically enough, it’s located under majestic Burgundian flags on the corner directly opposite of the original MailleMustard House – aka, the place that helped to give this town it’s worldwide gastronomic and condiment reputation nearly 300 years ago. We arrived for a relatively late dinner and the line pushed out the doors, as it normally does.

Most of the customers were at or below 30 and the menu largely resembled the last McDonald’s menu that I had visited in the US: various hamburgers, fish sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, salads, fries, and ice cream desserts. Some of what I assumed to be fine-tuned marketing for the local preferences, included Charolais beef patties (the dominant breed of cattle in Burgundy), various grilled meat(s) wraps, melon and pineapple sides in plastic packets, whole what hamburger buns, side salads instead of fries, “pancakes” with Nutella, and the local favorite: la moutarde dijonnaise (Dijon mustard). Michael decided to go classic by taking the “Menu Big Mac,” or the equivalent to the US “combo” meal option: hamburger with whole-wheat bun, fries, and a Coke. I went veg (unless I’m misinformed about the oil that they use) and just took fries.

Our meal: Big Mac and Fries

One of the dominant stereotypes I have after growing up with American McDonald’s is that you go there for a easy, tasty, filling, and cheap meal (e.g. the concept of the one dollar hamburger). But unless I wasn’t paying attention the last time I was at a McDonald’s in the US, this may only be true of American outlets. Our price for a combo and extra fry was 9.35 euros, or close to twelve American dollars. Along with Michael’s evidently expensive Charolais beef, whole grain Dijon mustard, and wheat bun Big Mac went my assumption that eating at McDo was always “economique.”

We found a seat on the second floor beneath a portrait of an awkward Ronald McDonald waving from a vineyard. We could watch the street like we can at any local café, bar, or brasserie through arched windows framing historical Burgundian icons. According to the stares I received while taking pictures of this typical French McDo establishment, evidently I was the gawking tourist who found this setting both very bizarre and (thanks to the depiction of the Hamburglar on horseback in a field adjacent to Ronald’s vineyard) very funny. Their judgmental stares quickly informed me that I was the only one, though. Sitting down next to Michael (also unphased by McDonaldland à la Bourguignon mural), I grabbed my fry and waiting for him to reveal this roughly $8 Big Mac.

Source: http://mcdonalds.wikia.com/wiki/McDonaldland

I expected the hamburger to be as big, if not bigger, than the US equivalent. However, indistinguishable from the pictures, the general portion sizes were much smaller than what I remember from American meals. I’m talking normal dollar menu size, but a little more vertical given two patties of meat and a bun in the middle. Regular meals here apparently don’t come as the Triple Super Max Large (or whatever) Big Mac size that I had expected. And the taste? Personally, I thought it was like any other McDo hamburger I’d had in the US: salty, meaty (hard to specify what kind), and somehow sweet. Feeling a little confused about France’s seemingly contraditory food preferences, I quietly finished of my fries with a packet of the restaurant’s Dijon mustard.

Like many McDonald’s in the US, many French McDo’s feature McCafés. Instead of only being an option on the menu though, the Dijon McDo has an actual café.

My reaction to McDo en France, however, was perhaps only evidence of my own initial impression as an American outsider who admires an old stereotype of French food culture. Like many others, I romanticize the tradition, but this tradition is an archetype according to the French. As it would since France is a modern country, popular eating has naturally evolved from daily preparations of poulet rôti and boeuf bourguignon. A multiple course and communal dinner remains the norm though; although now those multiple courses might imply fruit sealed in a plastic sack, followed by a Big Mac and fries, then a McFlurry, and washed down a Coke while seated under a mural featuring Ronald’s purple friend, the Grimace, milking a cow (Like French cheese and local breeds of cattle, I assume that his depiction is subject to change according to region).

As strange as the image of the McDonald’s characters in rural Burgundy might seem, it’s actually a somewhat outdated but lasting symbol of how McDonald’s has been able to succeed in France. Like Ronald and friends in said oddly bucolic image, the company became French. For example, McDo sourced 75 percent of its ingredients domestically as of 2001 according to Steinberger. This fact, in addition to an extremely well executed marketing campaign appealing to social values including smaller portion sizes, use of comparatively expensive regional food ingredients (e.g. Charolais beef and Dijon mustard), respect for environmental concerns (they advertise Rainforest Alliance certified teas and Fair Trade certified coffees), and just enough Americana to keep the chain’s image out of direct competition with the traditional French restaurant establishment. Whereas the symbol of McDonald’s is often cited as evidence of globalization, a closer look at the French model reveals that instead of trying to dominate a society’s food values, the successful McDo model has instead attempted to mirror them.

It became clear to me while Michael and I were leaving the restaurant and past the Maille mustard boutique that these, among other reasons, are why that there hasn’t been any large resistance against their juxtaposition. They seemingly, if not paradoxically, coexist. McDo has built its own high quality identity in an effort to distance itself from negative stereotypes. In doing so, it’s even won the respect of the French culinary élite refer to it as “an expression of the modern condition” since “eating well takes lots of time” and modern France – like the rest of the Western world – moves fast (Steinberger, 117). The comparatively “slower” ideals of traditional French food culture still have a very strong presence and play a lead role in cultural identity, but as long as McDo continues to sell what this changing society demands, then it seems that the McDonald’s on the Champs-Élysées will most likely remain the most frequented eating establishment in all of France (Gordon, 55).

McDo Dijon’s breakfast offerings: croissant and espresso

Looking for a wedding venue and the Ritz Carlton is booked during your weekend? Try McDonald’s.

Source: Morgan Clendaniel.

Day 137 of the Happy Meal Project. Check out the progression here.

Video was posted on the NYtimes website a couple of days ago. A bit controversial, but what is more interesting to me are the responses by readers posted on the NYtimes and Youtube. Many responders feel that McDonald’s is NOT to blame, that government should refrain from imposing dietary/nutritional restrictions and that people, as responsible adults, should readily understand that eating at McDonald’s on a regular basis is not a ‘good thing’.

Photo of McDonald’s Arches sourced from http://fiscalandchips.com/?p=82.

Source: The Motherload

Yes, I went to McDonald’s three times when I was in India because I’ll admit, the McAloo and fries were really, really good there. Plus it was so nice, friendly, and fancy. But in the U.S., I haven’t been in one in a long, long time.  There are multiple reasons why, one of the big ones being that little link between fast food and obesity? Yeah…it’s kinda true. So before you agree to to buy your little ones a meal just to collect all 10 figurines, please:

• Check out this report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest on kid’s meals and obesity, and
• Read Amy Clark of MomAdvice”s piece on how to prepare a healthier, home-made Happy Meal (Thanks, Amy, for a brilliant idea!)

Beyond the health reasons, however, there are other benefits to depend less on take-out and drive-throughs…

…and more on home-cooked, family meals. I know that many of us are so busy that cooking every day seems impossible. But find the time now or pay for it later, as they say.

Study after study shows that eating (healthily) together as a family not only reduces the chance of obesity, but also can lead to lower risk of depression and increase cognitive development. Eating together allows families to share stories and pass down family traditions and knowledge. Much learning happens in the kitchen and around the dining table so whether children are helping stir the pot or set the table, eating together as a family has many immeasurable benefits. Check out this quick video about how obesity can be partly attributed to the decline of the family meal:

Source: Snagfilms

Keep in mind it’s not just eating together physically. Eating fast food together or a home-cooked meal in front of a television isn’t quite what this video is talking about. It is eating healthily together, conversing, interacting, debating, learning, sharing.

Now that sounds like a real  happy meal.

Instead, we blasted up I-95 in Belinda’s Hobbit-sized, strawberrilicous, red bug,  ‘running’ from one meal to the next, pillaging plates of marvelously delectable and tragically unhealthy cuisine.

Meal Itinerary:

10:00am: First stop on our culinary exploration was an airstream parked on some random corner in NC to pick up a box of Daisy Cakes’ incredible Red Velvet and Grapefruit/Pink Lemonade cupcakes (www.eatdaisycakes.com).  We managed to eat only 1 cupcake each prior to breakfast.

10:20am:  Next stop, Parker & Otis (http://www.parkerandotis.com/store/index.php), an attractive, urbanish, warehouse-y, gourmet grocery store and restaurant with an outdoor seating area in the back.  Quickly ordered the #3 from the breakfast menu (Two eggs, any style, bacon, and cheddar biscuit) and washed it down with a coffee for me/strange juice for Belinda.

11:00am:  Buy essentials from Parker & Otis (candy, bag of chips and water).

12:30am: Invited ourselves to a friend’s brothers’ house for lunch.  A refreshing, heart healthy/cleansing salad with mesclun greens, ripe, pale orange mangos and grilled chicken was served with crusty white bread.  For desert, farm stand strawberries and creamy cheesecake bites that obliterated any benefits the salad might have offered.

3:00pm:  McDonalds for ‘fish sandwich and ‘chicken’ nuggets.  So bad, and yet, so good.

8:00pm:  Arrive at destination.  After eating three days worth of calories appropriate for 300-pound man, we didn’t exactly feel spritely.  But rather than drive off a cliff, I topped off my day with a diet pill and phone call to Weight Watchers.

This was one happy day. Happy Meal it was. The McDonald’s was super nice and clean with upbeat funky dance music playing. Great atmosphere.

The food. Oh, the food. Now I cannot tell whether it is because I have missed fluffy, soft buns (flatbreads are wonderful, but they are, well, flat) and in India, the McDonald’s buns are just as the image depicts – it is soft and fluffy. In the U.S., the soft fluffy bun often comes out squished and smashed. Not here. It was wondrous. I knew what I wanted to order – the biggest thing on their menu, but their other items all seemed just as good. McAloo (potato) Tikka sandwich, Salad Sandwich…their value menu starts at Rs. 20 (about $0.40).

As beef is not sold here, I ordered the Chicken Maharaja Mac, their version of the Big Mac. It came with fries, and I ordered a Coke float. The bun…oh, I talked about the bun. The special sauce was a mayonnaise spiced with chili powder and other spices familiar in Indian cooking. The fries were perfect – doesn’t have that meat flavor – but perfectly cooked and salted. The ketchup came in two little containers, and it was sweeter than what is found in the U.S. The Coke float was splendid. I could not have asked for more.

It is interesting how in the U.S., I often think of McDonald’s as the place of last resort – they are great for bathroom emergencies on the highway, and the occasional I-need-chicken-nuggets urge. Otherwise, I tend to avoid them. While I did go to nice one in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin with super friendly employees, most of the ones in the larger cities are impersonal and not the cleanest. Here, in India, however, it seems to be a place where at least the middle/upper class go. The food is amazing, the place is nice, and the employees really do smile.

So is McDonald’s a “good” or “bad” thing for Indian culture and cuisine? Diabetes and other diseases more commonly found in the U.S. are on the rise in India – especially among the wealthy. Is that due to an increase in fast food that is yet accessible to the lower socio-economic classes?

I’m not sure the answers to these issues, or whether there is even an answer. I do know that I thoroughly enjoyed my meal at a place that is familiar to me, and at the same time one that I usually avoid. An amazing sandwich for Rs. 125 (less than $3).

Talk about a Happy Meal.

Of course, one of the first sights is good ole McDonald’s. I know it gets a lot of flak in the U.S. – I actually haven’t been to one in the U.S. in a long, long time, but I’m very tempted to try the one here. It is a finer dining experience, apparently, AND they deliver.

My life pretty much revolves around my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Most of the meals here are vegetarian, but it’s a sort of vegetarian that is friendly to meat eaters. I don’t even seem to miss meat too much…sort of. Apparently, unless you go to the fanciest restaurants during the summer, beware meat because storage is not always guaranteed to be cold enough to avoid any bacteria. Have I eaten meat anyways here? Oh, yes.

There are certainly some familiar foods for Americans who love Indian food in the U.S. – masalas, chana (chickpeas), naan – the usual suspects. Here, though the food is much spicier and at least for my palate, far tastier than some of Indian food in the U.S. which tends to dull down its flavors. A standard lunch or dinner is started with a soup here such as spinach and corn soup (photo 6). Some sort of bread, such as dosa or naan, usually accompanies a dal (lentils) or a paneer (cheese) dish such as paneer tikki masala or a palak dish (spinach). On occassion, we get some meat such as the murgh mukhani (butter chicken) (photo 4) or fish such as the fish masala (photo 3).

The spices here have an added oomph and flavor, and some dishes are more unique than anything I have ever come across before in the U.S. As someone used to eating Indian food in America, few restaurants compare to this university dining experience. The one restaurant that does stick out in my mind is in Washington, DC: Rasika. There, Chef Vikram Sunderam has done a pretty fantastic job bringing a bit of India to the U.S. Esquire has rated it one of the top 20 restaurants in the U.S.

More to come.