Jacqueline Friedrich: The Wine Humanist WINE BY PEOPLE, FOR PEOPLE; WINE FROM THE HEART

Nothing. At least not in the restaurant I ate in last Wednesday.

Said restaurant shall remain nameless to protect the innocent – me – from a potential lawsuit. Also, I was not able to go into the kitchen to confirm my belief that I would find nothing simmering on burners or baking in ovens; no raw eggs, no unpeeled onions, garlic, carrots or leeks. So this is a hunch but I think a well-founded one.

Not every structure that hangs the sign “restaurant” on its door makes the food it serves. I’m not talking aged cheese or air-dried sausages here, I’m talking pot au feu and souris d’agneau.

That’s what two of my fellow dining companions ordered. But let me start at the beginning.
We were at a multi-purpose complex that encompassed a large winery, a hotel, said restaurant, gift shops and conference facilities. I doubt you’ll go there, so don’t worry. I’m telling this story to make a point.
We all ordered a first course of foie-gras filled ravioli. Most of us followed this with a steak of biche (doe) in a wine sauce which came with a drum-shaped pile of scalloped potatoes. The next day I had a “tapas” plate that came with a shot glass of gazpacho – of the kind I can buy in the grocery store in tetrapak containers – truly dismal accras de morue (cod fritters), greasy bits of fried chicken and shrimp wrapped in julienned potatoes and then fried. (The same that I’d had at the fete held at the Hotel de Ville de Paris for Barack’s inauguration. Only those were fully cooked and crispy.)

Everything was edible, even tasty. But I firmly believe it came from a company that specializes in preparing frozen or vacuum-sealed dishes for pseudo-restaurants. These exist. And the variety of dishes offered is mind-boggling, ranging from funky bistro fare to recent top-hits in the haute cuisine parade.

If you live in France you’ve shopped in Picard, the mega-frozen food chain. (I’m a life member.) If you visit France, you’d do well to check out a branch. There you can see the wondrous array of time-saving, good tasting dishes you can buy – from foie gras stuffed quail to Peking duck preshredded, placed in pastry cones and ready for reheating as chic cocktail food as well as bistro standards like boeuf aux carottes and exotic dishes like chicken tikka masala.

The companies servicing restaurants are even more creative. But you need to be a professional to get their catalogues. (At least that’s what I was told.)

What bothers me about this is not the fact that these places are serving food they didn’t make but that they’re leading us to believe they did make it.

If we’re going to pay good money to go out to eat – and for many of us this is a treat, something we plan for and look forward to – we deserve to know if we’re going to be served something we could have pulled from our own freezer or something made on the premises, ideally from fresh ingredients.

Don’t get all complicated about it. Just state it clearly on the menu. That would be truth in advertising. Because if you're calling yourself a restaurant without any modification, I'm going to believe that the food you serve me was made on the premises -- until my palate tells me otherwise.