There are a few things France is famous for, for example a lax attitude to health and safety, and patisserie. There are a few things England is famous for, such as health and safety fascism, and obesity. The thing the countries have in common: mutual banter. The rivalry between the nations is probably the highest between any two European countries, but I’m sorry, Britain’s just stabbed itself in the foot, and can go hang it’s head in shame.
Yesterday I was at the university canteen, and I saw a lone pain au chocolat, (for those uninformed, scroll to the bottom of this page for a photo). The dialogue went something like this:
Me: Hi, is it possible to have one of these warmed up?
Staff 1: Sorry?
Me: Can I have this put in a microwave for half a minute?
Staff 2: Yeh sure, help yourself.
Me: How much does it cost? [mumble to friends: I bet £3 or more]
Staff 2: 95p
Satisfied, I take it to the till, and ask for a bottle of Fanta. The lady informs me that the fridge isn’t working, so it wont be cold, I tell her that really doesn’t bother me, and pay for the drink and pain au chocolat. After a brief awkward silence:
Me: So, where can I get this warmed up?
Staff 2: Did you ask me if I could have it warmed up?
Me [with friends nodding in agreement]: Actually I did.
Staff 2: We can’t do that.. can we?
Staff 3 [manager?]: Nope, sorry
I’ve never willingly had a cold pain au chocolat in my life. I love how it goes soft and chewy when microwaved, or crispy when grilled, and however cooked, the molten chocolate oozes out at one end as you bite the other, and burns your lap. Like pizza, they’re made to be hot, only cretins like them cold; to have one cold is a disappointment I suffer only as a survival option.
Me: Why not?
Staff 2: We don’t know what the effects of heating one up are, its health and safety regulations, sorry.
Me: You’re kidding?
Staff 2 [without a hint of irony]: For all we know, it might actually turn poisonous and kill you.
Looking back, I’m wondering how, with this “everything must be the right temperature” policy, she got away with selling me a warm Fanta.
Now, I do travel to France quite a lot, and you’d be right in saying that the French don’t really cook their pastries. In fact, at a service station near Paris I had to explain to them that by “pain au chocolat chaud” I wasn’t being a retarded tourist asking for a loaf of bread with hot chocolate. The reason for this is, in France, especially the south where I go, the bakeries present the food on a stall outside the shop. Down there in the Mediterranean heat, you can’t NOT have a warm and crispy pain au chocolat, oven or not. It turned out the woman was Romanian and had no idea what a pain au chocolat was either. Her French supervisor told me this himself, while putting it in the oven. Several months before, and back on English soil, I was at a service station and made the same request. The pimple face on the other side of the counter looked at me horrified, and went to ask the manager. I thought it was maybe his first day on the job, and he wanted to know how to use the microwave. Wrong. He came out, and told me no, it can’t be done, for health and safety reasons.
Either way, I just opened up the pain au chocolat, the very one she sold me, I put it in the microwave, blasted it with 800 watts for 30 seconds, and devoured every last crumb. It tasted awesome; I don’t appear to be dead yet, I’ll keep you informed of the side effects.
Crispy molten goodness. Mmmmmmmm...
TL;DR: Health and Safety regulation wont let me have pain au chocolat- a food made to be heated up- heated up. Maybe its a conspiracy to get people off continental breakfasts and back to fried bread, aka. shit.
NB: side-note: Fried bread is what the military feeds us before expecting us to go on a 1.5mile run. It caused me to throw up the first time, and now the sight of fried bread makes me queezy. I think I’ll up sticks and join the Foreign Legion.