Paris (AFP)
Gault & Millau, the second gastronomic guide after the Michelin, offers a new format with gourmet selections around French consumer goods, starting with pie charts.
The guide launched 47 years ago to evaluate and promote restaurants, decided to focus on accessible products and regular consumption that people buy at the supermarket, a "first" for a culinary guide, told AFP the president of Gault & Millau Jacques Bally.
These selections will be available on the guide's website, on the application and published in the regional press.
"We realize that what is consumed in restaurants is an infinitesimal part compared to all the world food consumption of a population that goes to the supermarket, artisans, caterers and catering", says Bally.
"We start with the pie charts, but we'll go to the oysters, the salmon, to the organic sodas, we will make chewing gum, jams, caviar, a whole set of products that are the source of pleasure daily, "he adds.
This new ranking of the "Top 10", which will evaluate one to two products per month, is "the logical follow-up to our original business".
The approach is "totally different" from the evaluation of restaurants whose chefs "do not know who they are tested and when". For products, "it is the sectors that send samples".
The chief investigator of the guide "who represents the DNA of Gault & Millau" participates in the evaluation as well as invited chefs "known for their good knowledge" of the tested product. "We do not intervene on the nutritional impact, this selection is purely organoleptic" (taste, smell, appearance), says Mr. Bally.
Among the raw milk pies of Normandy - organic, artisanal and industrial - it is an industrialist (Marie Anne Cantin) who was selected number 1. Will be tested in the coming weeks vanilla ice creams and jams with apricots.
? 2019 AFP