Free The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq Page B

“In one of the hotels described in your guide?”
    “Yes, that’s a good idea.” She thought for a few seconds. “But incognito. Without saying I work for Michelin.”
    Even in these conditions, thought Jed, they could expect from the hoteliers a special welcome: a rich young urban couple without children, aesthetically very decorative, still in the first phase of their love affair—and for this reason quick to marvel at everything, in the hope of building up a store of
beautiful memories
that would come in handy when they reached the difficult years, perhaps enabling them to overcome a
crisis in their relationship
. They represented, for any professional in the hotel-restaurant trade, the archetype of ideal clients.
    “Where would you like to go first?”
    On reflection, Jed noticed that the question was far from simple. Many regions, as far as he knew, were of real interest. It was conceivably true, he thought, that France was a marvelous country—at least from the tourist’s point of view.
    “We’ll start with the Massif Central,” he finally decided. “For you, it’s perfect. It’s perhaps not the best, but I think it’s very French; I mean, it could only be in France.”
    It was Olga’s turn to flick through the guide, and she pointed out a hotel to him. Jed frowned. “The shutters are badly chosen. On gray stone I would’ve put brown or red shutters, green in a pinch, but certainly not blue.” He looked further at the introduction, and his perplexity increased. “What is this gibberish? ‘In the heart of a Cantal crossed with the Midi where tradition rhymes with relaxation and freedom with respect …’ ‘Freedom’ and ‘respect’—they don’t even rhyme!”
    Olga took the guide from him, and read the text closely. “Ah, yes, I see now … ‘Martine and Omar make us discover the authenticity of the food and wine.’ She married an Arab: that’s why ‘respect’ is there.”
    “That could be all right, especially if he’s Moroccan. It’s damn good, Moroccan cuisine. Maybe they do Franco-Moroccan fusion food, foie gras pastilla and the like.”
    “Yes,” said Olga, unconvinced. “But I’m a tourist. I want something Franco-French. A Franco-Moroccan or Franco-Vietnamese thing can work for a trendy restaurant on the Canal Saint-Martin; certainly not for a
hôtel de charme
in the Cantal. I’m maybe going to remove it from the guide, this hotel.”
    She did nothing of the sort, but this conversation gave her food for thought, and a few days later she proposed to the management that they organize a statistical survey of the dishes actually consumed in the hotels. The results were only known six months later, but they largely validated her first intuition. Creative cuisine, as well as Asian, was unanimously rejected. North African cooking was appreciated only in the far south and on Corsica. Whatever the region, the restaurants boasting a “traditional” or
“à l’ancienne”
image registered bills sixty-three percent higher than the average. Pork products and cheeses were a safe bet; but above all the dishes based on bizarre animals, with not only a French but also a regional connotation, such as wood pigeon, snails, and lamprey, achieved exceptional scores. The editor of the section “Food, Luxury, and Intermediary,” who authored the summary accompanying the report, concluded categorically:
    We were probably wrong to concentrate on the tastes of an Anglo-Saxon clientele in search of a
light
gastronomic experience, combining flavors with health and safety, and concerned with pasteurization and respect for the cold chain. This clientele, in reality, does not exist: American tourists have never been numerous in France, and the English are in constant decline; the Anglo-Saxon world as a whole now represents only 4.3% of our turnover. Our new clients, our real clients, from younger and rougher countries, with health norms thatare recent and, anyway, seldom enforced, are on the