There’s an old American saying that before you judge someone, walk a mile in their shoes. This gave rise to a joke almost as old, which is that once you’ve done that, you can do what you like, because they’re a mile away and you’ve got their shoes. In any case, it’s not true. If you really want to understand someone, you eat what they eat.
Centrist hottie and French president Emmanuel Macron is one of the new breed of youngish politicians who are very pretty, only with the distinct vibe of the Love Interest Who Turns Out To Be Evil in a romcom. His favourite food is cordon bleu: not the culinary training centres in which the world’s best chefs are made, but a dish of meat or poultry, or both, wrapped around cheese, then breaded and deep-fried. The dish and the cookery school have the same namesake: the blue sash worn by the highest order of knights in the old French monarchy, intended to connote excellence.
At one point on his 2017 campaign trail, Macron delighted French Twitter when he excitedly ordered a cordon bleu, only to be told he couldn’t have it because it was on the children’s menu only. Visibly disgruntled, he settled for the salmon.
Now safely installed as president, Macron can have cordon bleu whenever he wants. Fortunately for Macron, despite consisting of meat, cheese, breadcrumbs and nothing else, it has managed to escape his wife Brigitte’s junk-food ban. It certainly isn’t fast food: by the time you’ve flattened the veal, wrapped it in ham and filled it with cheese, you could have eaten a restaurant’s worth of Big Macs. It’s not healthy, either; it’s easy to make and it tastes delicious, but I can feel my arteries complaining as I eat.
Reasoning that at this point a few more carbs won’t hurt, I follow up with a baguette, which Macron recently declared “the envy of the world” and worthy of Unesco protection. Even though I offset it by finishing with Brigitte Macron’s 10-pieces-of-fruit-a-day rule, I end dinner feeling as if I’ve shaved a good year off my life expectancy. No wonder a man who considers this his meal of choice is keen to make a mark quickly.
Dining and Cooking