From McDonald’s to Starbucks, Virginia to California, French food’s history in the U.S. is rich and varied.
by Ashlie Stevens
illustration by Grace Molteni
There’s a science to how I enjoy my croissant– a production similar to how others might eat an Oreo. First, I pinch off one end. Then the other. Pull out the flaky insides, and then eat the equally flaky remaining shell.
“Is this what the French feel like?” I had to wonder one day. I was two steps into my croissant-eating process at a local Starbucks.
But then the 17-year-old barista-in-training pulled an aluminum pan lined with frozen croissants in little plastic baggies from the industrial-sized freezer. One by one, she popped them in the microwave for a quick nuke. I felt a quick pierce of shame —like one of those people who packs a striped T-shirt and beret for their study abroad in Paris, then look back at the photos a few years down the road in silent horror (or so I’m told). Crusty bits of croissant were stuck to the girl’s forest green apron.
Americans tend to have strong opinions regarding the French —especially when it comes to their food. Some view it as rustic, others as romantic. Some see fanciful, whereas others see ostentatious. But, like it or not, the country’s culinary appeal has transatlantic influence; French cuisine in America has a longstanding history, something I contemplated as the barista placed the once rocklike croissants under the display counter. La Boulange, the name of the bakery Starbucks began partnering with in 2012, was written in curly pink chalk lettering over the glass hood. I thought: “How have we gotten here?”
And it’s a valid question — how have we, as a country, moved from the French and Indian War (http://www.history.com/topics/french-and-indian-war), our British forefathers’ first major dealings with the French on American soil, to frozen French pastries? While there is no one way to resolve this question, I can offer you an incomplete, bite-sized survey — one filled with dabs of history, pinches of personal experience and a few incorrect appropriations —of how we have gotten here and where to go to connect the dots.
I. Monticello — Charlottesville, Virginia
After winding through corridors and down staircases, visitors at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia home, move from hardwoods to a neat brick floor. Some copper pots and wicker baskets hang from pegs on the whitewashed walls, some are stashed in an open cupboard. Here is where Thomas Jefferson’s domestic servants and enslaved cooks prepared elaborate meals for the president who is often credited with popularizing French culinary techniques in the United States.
In 1784, Jefferson took his domestic servant James Hemings to Paris to learn French cooking, years after first experiencing French-inspired cuisine at the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg, VA, where he dined regularly during his student days, and at the residence he and James Monroe shared in Annapolis. Upon his return to Monticello, he brought home such novelties as mustard, vinegar, raisins, nectarines, macaroni, almonds, cheese, anchovies, olive oil and 680 bottles of wine.
Jefferson’s tastes were different than what was offered in Virginia at the time (although when he was living in Paris he had Virginia hams, apples and pecans shipped to him). Thomas J. Craughwell: “Much American eighteenth-century food was ‘mushy.’ Cooks didn’t lavish a lot of attention on the food. Dishes typically were stewed or boiled. Gumbos and stews were common,” food historian Thomas J. Craughwell said in his book Thomas Jefferson’s Creme Brulee: How a Founding Father and His Slave James Hemings Introduced French Cuisine to America. “Americans didn’t eat a lot of vegetables, but they did eat a lot of white bread. They liked desserts, the sweeter the better. When it came to alcohol, port, madeira, ale, and hard cider were popular.”
Craughwell continued: “Thomas Jefferson was our first gourmet. He thought about food more than anybody else in America during his life. His views and interests, in fact, were a good 200 years ahead of his time.”
II. The French Laundry — Yountville, California
The French Laundry is an institution in the culinary world. Since 2006, it has received three Michelin stars. Anthony Bourdain said that is was “the best restaurant in the world, period.” And, in 1997, New York Times critic Ruth Reichl wrote an absolutely glowing review.
Yet, before it was an award-winning restaurant, The French Laundry was originally a saloon built by Scottish stonesmith Pierre Guillaume in 1900. Six years later, Prohibition prevented the sale of alcohol within a mile of a veteran’s home, in this case, the California Veterans’ Home which had been established years prior. A year later, in 1907, Guillaume sold Eagle Saloon to John B. Lande and his wife, Madeline Lande.
The Landes established a steam laundry in the building and changed the name to “The French Laundry.”
Fast-forward to 1994: Thomas Keller raised money from more than 60 investors and purchased The French Laundry on May 1. Doors opened to his restaurant July 6, serving American food with French influences and technique. Within three months, The French Laundry received a four-star rating from Michael Bauer of the San Francisco Chronicle.
III. Knopf Doubleday Publishing— New York, New York
Julie Powell, author of the bestselling memoir, Julie and Julia,summed it up best: “Do you know Mastering the Art of French Cooking? You must at least know of it– it’s a cultural landmark, for Pete’s sake. Even if you think of it as the book by that lady who looks like Dan Aykroyd and bleeds a lot, you know of it. But do you know the book itself? Try to get your hands on one of the early hardback editions– they’re not exactly rare. For a while there, every American housewife who could boil water had a copy, or so I’ve heard.”
Powell went on to describe the process of cooking through and blogging about every recipe—524 of them— in that book; a process that she wrote was ultimately lifechanging.
But in 1960, 45 years before Powell’s book was published, it was uncertain whether Mastering the Art of French Cooking would even be in American homes. Child and her two co-writers, Simca Beck and Louisette Bertholle, initially had difficulty placing the book as, according to publisher Houghton Mifflin, it read too much like an encyclopedia.
The women had been working on the book for 10 years, exchanging hundreds of letters throughout the process. Child kept meticulous notes and spent months writing many recipes of a single ingredients. She made so many egg dishes that she finally wrote to Beck, “I’ve just poached two more eggs and throw them down the toilet.”
The manuscript was rejected twice after that.
“Hell and damnation,” Child wrote to Beck in the spring of 1958.
Then, in 1960, the book was finally picked up by a new publisher, Alfred Knopf Jr. of New York, and nurtured by a young and talented editor, Judith Jones. In 1961, Child finally held in her hands the book titled Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
The reception to the book was marvelous. Housewives all across the States appreciated the way in which Mastering the Art of French Cooking took French classics—beef bourguignon, bouillabaisse, cassoulet—and made them accessible to the American cook by breaking the recipes down into manageable steps.
As Child put it: “Mastering the Art of French Cooking doesn’t mean it has to be fancy cooking, although it can be as elaborate as you wish.”
IV. McDonald’s — Downey, California
“The only French food I know is French fries,” my 12-year-old brother quips, pausing afterwards as if waiting for a rimshot. My other brother, 19, sarcastically responds with a weak, slow clap.
I hated to break it to him that French fries may not actually be French, but perhaps Belgian, originally created by inhabitants of the Spanish Netherlands. According to Belgian journalist Jo Gerard, a family manuscript of his from 1781 describes how those living in the Meuse Valley during the 1600s would fry small strips of fish; however, when lakes were frozen over in the winter months, they would fry potatoes in a similar fashion.
Gerard has not produced the manuscript for public review, though it doesn’t really matter. In the 2010 article, “La véritable histoire de la pomme de terre frite,” food historian Pierre Leclercq points out that peasants most likely wouldn’t have wasted large amounts of fat for frying potatoes, calling into question the veracity of Gerard’s claim.
On the French side, there are references to small bits of fried potatoes being eaten and sold in France from as early as 1775.
The dish was eventually Americanized; Thomas Jefferson comes up again as he would serve potatoes “fried in the French style” during his presidency. Then, later on in American history, World War I soldiers are said to have tasted Belgian-fried potatoes and, since French was the official language of the Belgian army, mistakenly thought themselves to be in France, further popularizing the term “French fries” upon their return.
Regardless of its origin, the “French” attribution stuck to the fries– and, perhaps sadly, the restaurant that is currently most associated with the food is McDonald’s. In his 2001 book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser summed up the McDonald’s fry’s transformation:
The French fry was “almost sacrosanct for me,” Ray Kroc, one of the founders of McDonald’s, wrote in his autobiography, “its preparation a ritual to be followed religiously.” During the chain’s early years french fries were made from scratch every day. Russet Burbank potatoes were peeled, cut into shoestrings, and fried in McDonald’s kitchens. As the chain expanded nationwide, in the mid-1960s, it sought to cut labor costs, reduce the number of suppliers, and ensure that its fries tasted the same at every restaurant. McDonald’s began switching to frozen french fries in 1966 — and few customers noticed the difference… In 1960 Americans consumed an average of about eighty-one pounds of fresh potatoes and four pounds of frozen french fries. In 2000 they consumed an average of about fifty pounds of fresh potatoes and thirty pounds of frozen fries. Today McDonald’s is the largest buyer of potatoes in the United States.
The oldest operating McDonald’s restaurant is in Downey, California. Built in 1953, it is still flanked by its original golden arches, bent from wiry neon — potentially worth a trip for its signature thin-cut fries, fresh from the fryer (or at least as fresh as can be post-freezing).
V. La Creperie — Chicago, Illinois
“Where did you learn to make crepes?” I asked Germain Roignant, the founder of Le Creperie in Chicago. The 77-year-old paused and asked, “Do you have any French in your vocabulary?”
When I said “not much,” Roignant decided that the short answer would do. He learned from a neighbor in Brittany, the French village where he grew up. “She would let me into the kitchen, and when I would ask her if I could help, she would say, ‘Why not? Yes.’”
Eventually, Roignant moved to New York before finally settling in Chicago where he used what he knew from home to open Le Creperie in 1972, making it the oldest creperie in the United States. For more than 40 years, he created a complex menu of savory (poulet aux champignons, epinards crème, fromage) and sweet (la citron, la noix de coco, Suzette á la Germain).
However in 2013, at the age of 75, Roignant announced he was closing the restaurant. After four decades, he was exhausted by the business’s financial strains; but, in addition to losing a restaurant, he lost something much greater– his son. Jeremy Roignant died at 39 of a heart attack in the family home above the restaurant.
Roignant needed some space, some time to grieve and consider the meaning of it all. He returned to his home in Brittany; he reconnected with childhood friends. He spent hours making crepes in the village where he first learned how.
Upon his return, it only made sense to accept an offer to partner up with the man purchasing the restaurant– to return to what he knew best.
“When they asked if I would return, I said, ‘Why not? Yes.’”
La Creperie reopened quietly in December of 2014. Chicago Tribune writer Mary Schmich described its revival: “The ancient wooden floors, from the days the building was a farmhouse, had been stripped of decades of paint and freshly varnished. The old copper awning above the bar gleamed like it hadn’t in ages. The crepes still smelled like crepes.”
VI. Lynn’s Paradise Cafe — Louisville, Kentucky
When the electric blue elephant was knocked over, it lost a leg. Someone from the neighborhood tried to set it back upright the next morning, but bypassers still took photos of the scuffed statuette, now balancing despite a stumpy leg, and posted them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Animosity had been building against Lynn’s Paradise Cafe since owner Lynn Winter unexpectedly closed the quirky joint in 2013 amid accusations of labor law violations and unfair tipping policies. For two years, she left the restaurant empty, yet kept the decor intact– including the multiple leg lamps, pleather chairs, twinkling Christmas lights, antique chandeliers, and primary-colored kites strung from the ceiling.Winter refused to sell it, but made it clear that she never intended to move back into the property, either.
Since its abandonment, the restaurant—also electric-blue— was considered an awkward eyesore by its neighbors. This collective resentment eventually manifested in acts of vandalism to the property; the most destructive was the elephant attack.
But when it was actually in business, Lynn’s was a charming Louisville staple. It was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Throwdown! with Bobby Flay on the Food Network,and it had the best French toast in the city, according to many locals.
Like french fries, French toast may not have exclusively Gallic roots. The first pseudo-mention of it is in the Apicius, a collection of 4th and 5th century Latin recipes; in it there’s a recording of a dish called aliter dulcia, ‘another sweet dish’ made of bread soaked in milk. According to Brendan Koerner in his Slate article “Is French toast really French?” the Oxford English Dictionary cites 1660 as the year “French toast” first made an appearance, in a book called The Accomplisht Cook. However, the preparation was different. The bread was soaked in wine, sugar, and orange juice– no egg.
“The Dictionary of American Food and Drink contends that the first egg-based recipe in print didn’t appear until 1870; throughout the tail end of the 19th century, similar recipes appeared under the monikers ‘French toast,’ ‘Egg toast,’ ‘Spanish toast,’ and even ‘German toast,’” Koerner said.
He continued: “A contradictory, though highly dubious, creation myth holds that French toast owes its creation to an Albany, N.Y., innkeeper named Joseph French. Legend has it that French whipped up a batch of the golden-brown treats in 1724 and advertised them as “French toast” because he’d never learned to use an apostrophe ‘s.’”
Winter liked to use bourbon (it’s Kentucky, after all) as an ingredient in her breakfast recipes. One of her French toast versions was called Bourbon Ball French Toast, featuring a bourbon vanilla custard, bourbon whipped cream, chocolate sauce, toasted pecan halves and strawberries. Another, the Quadruple “B” French Toast, was dunked in buttermilk and black walnuts and topped with a blackberry glaze and bourbon meringue.
But alas, with no more Lynn’s, Louisvillians are left with a dilapidated shell of a legend;with no more Lynn’s French toast, we are more compelled to to simply drink our bourbon straight.
VII. La Boulange– San Francisco, California (and your local Starbucks)
Pascal Rigo is a pastry magnate, of sorts. In 1996, he opened a small bakery on Pine Street in San Francisco. This one bakery, La Boulange, eventually multiplied into 19 Bay Area locations. Then, in 2012, the concept of La Boulange was bought by Starbucks for $100 million.
Sébastien Lépinard, founder of Next World Group, and a major investor in La Boulange, released a statement after the the news was announced: “La Boulange and Starbucks share similar values and a common vision for creating premium products in a socially responsible way. We have confidence that Starbucks will stay true to the ‘La Boulange’ brand while bringing the romance of an authentic French bakery to consumers across the United States.”
Its lauded scones, muffins and, yes, croissants, now appear in cases at Starbucks all across the country. In multiple interviews, Rigo said that the quality of the pastries would remain the same (“At our 19 locations, we get 10,000 to 14,000 customers a day,” he said. “We’d be stupid to change anything.”),making me feel infinitely better about my croissant fixation– though they are still frozen when at La Boulange they never were.
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Ashlie Stevens is a freelance food and features writer based in Louisville, Kentucky. Among other places, her work can be found at the Guardian US, Salon, Munchies, Louisville Magazine and STIR Journal. Follow her on Twitter or her website ashliestevens.com.
Grace Molteni is a Midwest born and raised designer, illustrator, and self-proclaimed bibliophile, currently calling Chicago home. For more musings, work, or just to say hey check her out on Instagram or at her personal website.
