McDonald's Does the Louvre

McDonald's restaurant and McCafe will open in the Louvre museum in Paris, France, next month. The horror, the horror... the French are livid.

McDonald's restaurants to open at the Louvre (10/4/09 Telegraph UK)

"Lovers of France's two great symbols of cultural exception – its haute cuisine and fine art – are aghast at plans to open a McDonald's restaurant and McCafé in the Louvre museum next month.

"America's fast food temple is celebrating its 30th anniversary in France with a coup -the opening of its 1,142nd Gallic outlet a few yards from the entrance to the country's Mecca of high art and the world's most visited museum.

""This is the last straw," said one art historian working at the Louvre, who declined to be named. "This is the pinnacle of exhausting consumerism, deficient gastronomy and very unpleasant odours in the context of a museum," he told the Daily Telegraph.

"Didier Rykner, head of The Art Tribune website found the idea "shocking".

""I'm not against eating in a museum but McDonald's is hardly the height of gastronomy," he said, adding that it was a worrying mixture of art and consumerism. "Today McDonald's, tomorrow low-cost clothes shops," he said."

To the French horror, Starbucks opened a cafe near the museum last year. And now McDonald's. What is the world coming to?!

What's really amusing, against these protestations from the cultured French, is that France is the biggest market for McDonald's outside the U.S.:

"However, even if there were a last-minute u-turn at the Louvre, statistics suggest the battle of Le Big Macs has already been lost. France has become McDonald's biggest market in the world outside of the US, according to the chain. While business in traditional brasseries and bistros is in freefall, the fast food group opened 30 new outlets last year in France and welcomed 450 million customers – up 11 per cent on the previous year."

The French are free not to patronize McDonald's or Starbucks if they so detest. I don't like Starbucks coffee myself. It just tastes like burnt coffee. I used to frequent McDonald's in European cities when I was there, not as a place to eat but as a convenient bathroom stop.

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