The burger quest

Text and photos by Ash Thomas

Americans traveling to France will, at one point, sit down at a restaurant, scan the menu and be surprised to see the familiar word “burger” listed as an entree, recognizable even in a fully French menu.

The American cheeseburger. Simple, classic. Sizzling meat with cheese that melts as soon as it’s placed upon the patty, sandwiched between a rounded bun. It may have sauces and fresh vegetables stuffed in between the buns, but the meat, cheese, and a bun are the core components of the classic cheeseburger. It’s a cheeseburger, after all, not a cheese-lettuce-tomato-onion-ketchup burger.

You might pass the burger over in order to try new, more French foods, but one day, you may find yourself craving a familiar American food, or you might just cave to your curiosity, as I did. I’ve had several burgers from restaurants in Arles over the past week, and here is how they compare to the American burger.

I first caved to the call of the burger at an early dinner at Cafe de la paix. I really wanted to eat something meaty, and the steak cost a couple of euros more than I was willing to spend on a small dinner, so I ordered the burger. This burger had a bit of an Italian twist — with mozzarella cheese melted atop the meat — and it included a kind of tomato sauce or paste in lieu of ketchup.

While good on its own, when compared to its American counterpart, this one did not hit the mark. If you bite into mozzarella expecting American cheese, you’ll be disappointed. And even though the French seem to have embraced burgers, show this burger to an Italian, and they might just go into cardiac arrest from the sheer culinary blasphemy of daring to make a burger Italian.

The next burger I bought was at lunch a few days later at Cafe Georges. When I held the burger I ordered in my hands, I was surprised by the liquid cheese that spilled out from the sides. My silly initial thought was that it was nacho cheese. It was actually cheddar sauce, in addition to the cheese already melted into the top of the burger. That, coupled with the two strips of dry bacon laid across the patty, made this one feel like a French recreation of a typical American burger.

I thought, “Is this what French people think Americans eat on a daily basis?” It was easily twice the size of the burgers I usually eat in the States. Ultimately, I took the burger apart and just ate the meat, cutting it with a fork and knife like a pretentious foodie. This burger was close, but ultimately, it was buried in accouterments. The texture that the cheese sauce added was all wrong.

I can already sense the exasperated groans and eye rolls this next place will get from readers. I know it should be considered blasphemy to even be within 10 feet of a McDonald’s when you’re in Europe, but if you want an American-style burger, you go to a place that started in America. I hopped on the bus and rode five stops to the nearest McDonald’s.

The Quarter Pounder with Cheese, in my opinion, represents a simple but classic style of American cheeseburger. It’s called the Royal Cheese in France, since a quarter of a pound doesn’t compute with the metric system. The taste is a bit different, but I did not have the religious experience European McDonald’s induces in some Americans. The burger had a similar taste to the ones at McDonald’s I’ve visited in Germany and Ukraine.

At this point, I feel the need to clarify that when I travel, I don’t only eat at international McDonald’s. But I was on a definitive mission now: to find a good American-style burger in France. I ended up finding a great one at the next place I went to, a restaurant unique to Arles: Le Bistrot Arlésian. It was the restaurant where I had eaten my first lunch in Arles, and the water-spraying misters hung up around the sun-shielding umbrellas made it a welcome refuge during the hot days. I sat down at Le Bistrot Arlésian for the third time this month, saw a cheeseburger on their menu, and decided I might as well try it. You know, for the review.

The Bistrot Arlésian’s Le Royal Cheese Burger shares its name with the European McDonald’s Quarter Pounder, but the quality far exceeds that of the McDonald’s burger. With a thick patty, melted cheese, and a bun decked out with sesame seeds, Le Royal Cheese Burger is the best American-style burger I’ve had in France. Like the one at Cafe Georges, though, the burger is far larger than most American burgers. I found it ironic since American portions are stereotyped as overly large.

It is now Monday, the day I’m supposed to finish writing this. That brings us to Le Naan’s, the final destination of my cheeseburger tour of Arles. If you want fast food but don’t want to feel the secondhand embarrassment of being an American stepping into a French McDonald’s, Le Naan’s is the place to go. As its name suggests, its specialty is naan, but it offers all kinds of fast food, including burgers.

I ordered my cheeseburger from Le Naan’s with ketchup, tomato and lettuce, all typical of the American cheeseburger. In size and presentation, Le Naan’s burger is nearly identical to its American counterpart, except the bun is adorned with grill marks rather than sesame seeds. Unlike the portions at Cafe Georges and Le Bistrot Arlésian, the size of Le Naan’s burgers was more manageable. The cheeseburger was about the size of the McDonald’s burger, and the only thing that disappointed me was the bun drowning out the thin meat patty.

Now, you might be thinking, “Did you really fly all the way to France just to search for American food?” Well, the answer is “No.” But when you’re living far away from home, even if it’s just for a month, there will be mealtimes where you just want to order something simple and something you’re guaranteed to enjoy (although, for the record, my actual comfort food in Arles is a bowl of penne pasta with tomato sauce from Mezza Luna).

Even though I have been comparing these burgers to the ones back in America, none of these burgers were objectively bad meals. It’s good to remain open-minded when trying French food, without expecting a food whose name you recognize to be 100% identical to what you’d get in America.