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Comment by wintorez | Hacker News Reader

Not surprised by this, but very surprised to learn that MacDonald’s is very popular in France. I expected the opposite.

For a long time French chefs didn't really "get" burgers. The model of a sandwich as a full meal doesn't really mesh well with French culinary theory and so it took foreign restaurants to build an audience (French burgers have since caught up and then some).

I still dream of getting the seed capital to start my beach burger shack, The Burgers of Calais...

Agreed on the "and then some". These days the burgers in France are much superior to the burgers in the UK (unless you go to Quick or something).

Big Fernand, Camion Qui Fume, and a few others are really doing great work here. I've even heard O'Tacos is toying with a burger offering.

Indeed. It was only after having lived in the US for a few years that I realized Americans actually considered burgers a "meal".

For most who grew up in the French or similar culinary traditions, a burger was more like a snack, perhaps comparable to a bag of chips (crisps).

As a french I have never heard of anyone considering a burger as a snack, like a bag of chips, and not as a meal. Do you use a burger as a side to something else? Like you would eat it with a kebab instead of fries? Or is it the same for the kebab?

I don't think you can select a meal in a restaurant, then have a burger instead of fries/salad as "accompagnement". You will also not find a burger in the "starters" section on a menu.

I think GP meant chips as in something you pick up while on the go, not as a side to a full meal. Notice how they mention a bag.

I don't know how old you are but I'm talking about 20 years ago. There is now a menu category ("snackings") that handles grilled items but that wasn't there in the 90s and early 00s, and it was the encroachment of brands like McDonalds and Cinq Mecs that made brands like Big Fernand and le Camion qui Fume possible (not to mention expanding Quick's menu).

Until recently, you would have been hard-pressed to find a French restaurant selling anything like a burger, maybe it's still the case?

On the other hand, many Americans think having a burger as the main course is perfectly acceptable.

In Montenegro, McDonald’s has failed back in 2003, albeit at a small scale. McDonald’s also failed in Macedonia in 2013, this time the scale was non-trivial, 7 restaurants.

We have a similar traditional dish in this region, IMO better than McDonald’s burgers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pljeskavica

The reason is not the food, but the opening hours and the lack of decorum. (French places have narrow opening hours usually either 12-14 or 7-10-ish.)

"Come as you are" has been their slogan for a long time. No need to dress up, be fancy, no, just sit down whenever you need to grab a bite.

Damn, I sound like I drank the koolaid. I really only go there because I know they have coffee all day on the go and I like to be about.

I often get caught out by this in France because I usually eat a late lunch in the UK and France is 1 hour ahead. You are cutting it fine if you start trying to find somewhere to eat at 1:30pm and by 2pm you’ve had it, game over. Suddenly the only option is Macdonalds and you know you’ve failed when you’re eating a lukewarm burger in a slightly seedy fast food restaurant; for some reason every time I’ve ended up in a Macdonalds in France it was pretty dirty.

McDonald's changes the recipes based in the country. In Italy you can find sandwiches with prosciutto and parmesan and they often use different buns than the soft, sugary ones.

Japan: Teriyaki McBurger

https://www.mcdonalds.co.jp/en/products/4530/

Food places sell identity more than anything. Food quality just needs to be good enough to somewhat fulfill expectations implied by the price range. "We're an American behemoth selling a mockery of your national identity" certainly won't have it easy in Italy, no matter how well the pizza might be (never tried, I don't find that identity particularly appealing even as German visiting the United States). MacDonald's in France won't have any issue with identity: if you do feel like having factory food, what better match could there be? MacD certainly does not pretend being something it's not.

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