Many regard France as a nation with a distinctive and worldrenown
cuisine (Ferguson, 2004). The recent addition of the
French multi-course gastronomic meal to the UNESCO World
Intangible Heritage list is, for some, evidence of this exceptional
culinary status. French gastronomy has been distinguished from
others based on complexity and its ability to impose itself on other
cuisines as the benchmark for excellence (Poulain, 2002). Such
interpretations of French culinary excellence fall outside the
bounds of the ordinary, run-of-the-mill hamburger, therefore,
rarely it is defined as high cuisine or worthy of protection. Yet,
when the hamburger was deployed to protect sacred ideals of
French republicanism, meaning and valorization of even the common,
everyday hamburger was reconstructed to map onto core
tenets of French identity.