Freedom Fries? Mais non!

By Patricia Dailey, Editor-in-Chief -- Restaurants & Institutions, 4/1/2003

Last month, restaurants in three U.S. House of Representatives office buildings yanked french fries from menus, a carefully staged act of defiance and outrage spearheaded by two lawmakers, Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.). And while fries often are flogged publicly for their fat content and occasionally for their levels of acrylamide, a substance some researchers feel may have carcinogenic properties, growing debate over health did not instigate this congressional censure.

The little potato sticks were singled out because they’re called—as they have been since they first were thinly cut and cooked to a crisp in a bubbling oil bath—french fries. As in those danged French, who dare hold a different view of Iraq than does the Bush White House.

At press time, French President Jacques Chirac was holding firmly to his terre, insisting that France would vote no to any United Nations resolution that seeks military action to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. As a retaliatory, anti-Gallic response, french fries were rechristened freedom fries, and French toast freedom toast.

Sacre bleu! How silly is that?

Unlike so many French foods that have been reverentially borrowed and transplanted into the American repertoire—French bread, French onion soup, Lyonnaise potatoes, French pastry—french fries were not named to honor their birthright but rather to reference the method of turning tubers into long, slender shapes. In other words, they’re frenched.

Agita at our French allies—“cheese-eating surrender monkeys” by Bart Simpson’s appraisal—has grown so much that in Reno, Nev., bottles of French champagne were dumped down storm sewers; a Las Vegas disc jockey ceremoniously flattened select French icons, among them a baguette, French yogurt and imported bottled water, riding roughshod over them with an armored vehicle; and a group of diners stalked out of a Chicago restaurant, sniffing that they never would have booked a table had they known it was a French restaurant.

Regardless of what it really aims to accomplish, this haughty, food-based “punishment” misses an important point. Food has an almost magical ability to unite people and cultures, to serve as a treasured and time-honored means to cross barriers and erase boundaries. How wise is it, then, to turn the contents of a peaceful table into symbols of anger?

With hypernationalism bubbling at the surface, talk continues of national boycotts of all things French—as in great Burgundys, perfectly pungent Roquefort cheese and certain fizzy waters. At the same time, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) proposes labeling older vintages of red wines as containing “bovine blood,” although that ancient method of clarifying wines stopped during the mad-cow era. He also is lobbying for stricter labeling on imported (read French) bottled water.

The politics of war are complicated, to be sure, with economic sanctions a proven way to drive home a point. But the likes of french fries and French toast should remain items of enjoyment, neutral in all global skirmishes, even in the name of freedom.