notes on podcasts

mar 10 - good podcast interview with Michael Steinbecker on decline of french cuisine

• "it's a lot harder to eat well in france today than it was 20 years ago"
• BOOK: Au Revoir to All That:Food, Wine, and the End of France: traveling francophiles had a creeping malaise while eating and couldn't pin it down, hence the book
• "one doesn't have to go to france anymore to have this culinary epiphanies anymore"
• "the book puts food in the context of the general decline of france"
• "french food is the best because of the creativity, the care they put into it, the quality of the products, has evolved over several centuries, cuisine is an intellectual pursuit"
• "in france to be a great chef was to be a cultural icon"
• "french cuisine is one of the most benign forms of imperialism the world has ever seen"
• who is the author of In Defense of food, an eater's manifesto
  Michael Pollan, more info
• "the french are coming in droves to mcdonalds, they're 'just loving it' to quote the commercial"
• "how sad is this: french mcdonalds have a different kind of french cheese on their cheeseburgers every month"
• "one reason mcdonalds is to popular in france is they get a 5% take-way-joint tax rate instead of a 19% restaurant tax rate"
• "french wine consumption has declined 50% over the last 40 years"
• "you have a neo-prohibitionist mindset in france and a french president who doesn't drink"
• "it's a very distressful thing for everyone who loves wine to see this fabulous wine culture waning"
• what is the new restaurant trend in france
  bistronomy, wiki
• "you still hear about it around the world if someone is promoted to 3 stars"
• "3-star restaurants are places with dozens of people hovering around you in penguin suits, people just don't want that anymore"
• "creativity dies a little bit when that third star is awarded"