Let Them Eat... Un diner presque parfait (an almost perfect dinner)

The perfect metaphor for France is a reality TV show called Un diner presque parfait. It unites some elements that characterize French life for me—obsession with food, conviviality over food, competition, severe grading, and a slightly cynical expectation of mediocrity. (The grading and competition elements make more sense if you know that I’m a professor at a French university.) The show would be a failure in the US and would never dare air on normal TV but would be relegated to the Food Network or some equally obscure corner of the cable universe. However, it’s acceptable daytime television in France.

The show works like this: the producers pick a city (it’s currently Dijon, where the mustard comes from), and maybe 5 contestants and each one has to prepare a dinner—complete with appetizers, a main dish and a dessert. They each create a menu and distribute it to the others in advance, so that everyone can comment on it to the camera. Each contestant is graded by the others on the quality of the food, the decoration of the table and the general ambiance. Included in the general ambiance is the expectation of after-dinner entertainment. For example, Marie-Antoinette’s rollicking after-dinner entertainment was playing some tunes on her hunting horn. This utterly charmed all her on-screen guests and left me completely baffled. However, even the hunting horn didn’t make up for her undercooked duck. The winner, who is obviously not Marie-Antoinette (French women with that name just don’t seem to win), gets general acknowledgement of his or her superior cooking skills and 1,000 euros.

This show has a lot of faux suspense—like “will Marie-Antoinette’s duck be too dry?” Or “The guests arrive in one hour—will Claire finish her sauce in time?” Or “will the others appreciate an entirely vegetarian dinner?” There are also little interviews with each person—little play-by-play reactions from both the chef for that night and the dining patrons on everything from the pattern of the napkins to the escargot appetizer to the chocolate covered pear and clementine pudding for dessert.

The last time I watched, Claire was in the lead with her entirely vegetarian dinner—which excited me to no end to learn that there is at least one other vegetarian in all of France. I wanted to call Claire up to talk about ways to cook lentils. However, I think someone knocked her out of top position—not Marie-Antoinette with her duck of shame, but Claude the retiree who never finishes all the food on his plate and consequently makes all the other contestants nervous or maybe Xavier, who in a rare confessional moment, told the camera that he’d decided to pretend he knew all about food and lie to everyone all the time and say things like, “I only buy fresh snails and then freeze them myself; I’d never buy frozen ones, quelle horreur.” Because of his arrogance, everyone believes him that he’s a great authority on French cuisine and he always looks very pleased with himself when he tells the camera for the umpteenth time that he just can’t believe that the others are falling for his act of gourmet chef expert foodie.

The average grade so far for our gang of wannabe chefs in Dijon is a 6.8 out of 10 and none of the contestants ever expect to do well—which we know since they are always asked to predict what grade they think the other will give them and they always expect a lower grade then they actually receive. They do, however, tend to grade each other severely as they have all survived the French school system. They give a lot of 5s and 6s since this is la moyenne (the average). Although they tend to be more generous with the decoration grade. Claire the vegetarian draped vines all over her table to highlight the evening’s organic theme and they liked this immensely. Marie-Antoinette had matching china and mystery gift envelopes containing a small shiny piece of paper you used to create a funnel and pour a cocktail. I’m not the greatest interpreter of French culture, but she seems pretty bourgeois, that Marie-Antoinette. Besides her hunting horn and paper cocktails, she also has a white poodle that she brought to Claire’s house for dinner without asking first, which Claire revealed to find slightly horrifying in an exciting play-by-play reaction to the arrival of her guests.

Unfortunately, I somehow missed 3 episodes of my new favorite program—it’s like the new Seinfield where nothing ever happens but everyone always eats… I didn’t see Claude, Xavier and Bertrand’s dinners, however, I caught the end of Real World (of Food) : Dijon this morning and learned that apparently for the first time in Un diner presque parfait history, 2 contestants were tied with the French all-time high score of 7.3 out of 10 and both won 1,000 euros. The winners were dainty-eater Claude and know-it-all Xavier. I hope their episodes will be rebroadcast every hour on the hour so that all of France and I can witness an outstanding 7.3 dinner on the Richter dining scale. The other contestants probably all killed themselves with shame. No, just kidding, they probably just said, “bof” and shrugged. And went to go have something to eat.