For roughly the past two decades, fast-food restaurants have
been popularly derided as ‘mal bouffe’, places which serve bad food
and represent the unwelcome Americanization of French society.
Herein lies one of the many contradictions of French gastronomy,
however. While the French slander fast-food, they are simultaneously
staunch patrons, making fast-food a popular mode of food
consumptiondparticularly among young people (Poulain, 2002).
Fantasia (1995) argues that McDonalds gives French youth an opportunity
to experience a new autonomous and liberating social
space. Given the long lines outside the doors on any given evening,
it is hard to deny that fast-food consumption is not well integrated
in everyday French life (Poulain, 2008).