75% of French restaurants serve industrial re-heated food.

[Sprogster]

For anyone in doubt as to the decline in the standards of French restaurants, it may come as a shock that in 75% of restaurants in France the food being served is pre-cooked industrial sourced, with the resulting cost saving of not requiring a chef in the kitchen, just someone who can re-heat the food.

http://www.rivieratimes.com/index.php/gourmet-article/items/ducasse-leads-new-quality-label-for-restaurants.html

 

 

[dave21478]

Yep, I think I mentioned this in my restaurant thread. Looking at the catalogues and speaking to the reps from some of the suppliers, it is perfectly feasible to run a restaurant serving a very wide selection of meals without even needing a full kitchen. All you need is enough fridges and freezers to stock everything in and a bank of microwave ovens and a few grills to heat up the foods.

EVERYTHING you can think of is available ready made, pre-cooked and just needing heated, from sauces to soups to main dishes, meats, salads....the lot.

It is even possible to get entire meals pre-served on plates that just require heating, then add the sauce which you heat separately etc. You then wash and return the plates on an exchange basis.

Have a look at the likes of Davigel or Brake.

ie....

http://www.brake.fr/pub/fr/prod/prod.php?rub=2,1,4&matnr=000000000000039414

I will bet you that the number of places using this sort of product is higher than 75%.

[NormanH]

There are of course degrees.

One of the restaurants at which I eat and from which I have posted photos buys in most of their desserts, but I am pretty sure that the starters and main courses are prepared by the owner, but he buys in pâtisserie ice creams etc.

Freshly grilled fish is quite difficult to fake.

[IMG]http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh80/bfb_album/fishinthesun_zps9548af43.jpg[/IMG]

Then again there are those who buy in sauces, mayonnaise etc. In fact I doubt that with the difficult hygiene regulations you will find freshly made mayonnaise almost anywhere, but this is not to say that the whole meal has been bought in pre-prepared.

Then of course there are those that just re-heat.

I can't see how anyone can possibly put a figure on it.

[nomoss]

[quote user="NormanH"] ..............
Freshly grilled fish is quite difficult to fake...............

[/quote]

But can you tell if it was frozen before it was freshly grilled?[6]

http://www.brake.fr/pub/fr/prod/prod.php?rub=2,1,2&grp=40&fam=32&fam1=48 

Edit: The veggies look as if they may have come out of a frozen packet! [6]

Edit again: But does it really matter so long as it tastes good?

 

 

[NormanH]

Oh I quite accept that some food might have been frozen, especially fish, although I think you can often tell by the texture with some.

That is yet another degree to add:  frozen ingredients  that have then been prepared by the chef, as opposed to a ready made frozen meal which is what I took the OP to be talking about.

[dave21478]

[quote user="nomoss"]

Edit again: But does it really matter so long as it tastes good?

 

 

[/quote]

Depends on how its described....

If you are serving up re-heated boil-in-the-bag meat that has been pre-prepared with its own sauce etc, then adding your own salad, you could claim the meal is home cooked. It will still taste fine, but the customer might be a little miffed at paying a premium price for what they think is a lovingly prepared dish you have slaved over all day when in fact it was prepped in vast quantities in a factory hundreds of miles away, flash frozen, stored in a warehouse freezer, delivered by truck to your resto, stored in your freezer for God knows how long, then just microwaved.....

I used the souris d'agneau above as an example as this is something I used to serve regularly. However I bought them frozen, but uncooked from Davigel by the carton. I prepped and cooked them on site, making my own sauce etc, which IMO easily gave me the right to call it home made. But it was possible to buy the pre-cooked stuff at such low prices that I can easily see why many places take the easy option. prices varied throughout the season depending on promos etc, but the unit price difference between an uncooked one and a ready prepped one was often less than one Euro.