Parisian Salon

We'd heard of famous Parisian salons, but none of those imaginings of literary crowds and intellectual tussles prepared us for our adventure at a salon today....the Salon d'Agriculture.  For weeks we've been going eye-to-eye with a large brown-and-white speckled cow, her nostrils flaring, and identification tags dangling like long pierced earrings. She stares out from posters promoting the Salon that have been plastered around every metro and bus. Today we went to see what the hullabaloo was about. No intimate affair, since every French school child on vacation this week must've been there, with parents & grandparents in tow. We made our way inside and discovered aisle after aisle of livestock competitions, horticultural exhibits, and food stalls. It was the York Fair on steroids but no Zipper (unless you count the demo of the new European car that was spinning 360° while a line of people waited to be permitted to inside, where they'd scream until they tumbled out at the end, pale & disappointed that it was over). The French obviously deserve to take great pride in their food and land, but this annual event is a blatant trumpeting of national pride. And so our surprise to find a McDonald's prominently exhibiting. When McD's first opened here, it was an outrage.  Furious chefs & farmers protested; one even took a bulldozer to a storefront to make the objections known in a most unsubtle manner. And he immediately became a national hero. Fast forward 30 years later, and McD's are all around. They've managed to adapt to the local culture--and economy--by sourcing 75% of the food from French land. We hear the frites are really good. And now France is McD's largest market--outside of the U.S.  Mon dieu!